So, my left foot has gone wacky on me again, leaving me with limited options at the gym (i.e., can’t run, can’t do the stairmaster or stair killer, can’t do my jumpity-jump workouts, can’t kickbox, etc.). I went onto Fitness Magazine’s website and tried out their build-a-workout. Before my foot wigged out on me, I wasn’t too impressed, to be honest – it was mostly weight stuff, not really cardio (I’m a sucker for cardio). Then I tried one workout in their magazine that claimed to fit it all in, in just 20 minutes. Thinking it’d be a good warm-up, I got right into it (pre-foot problem). HOLY COW. I was sweating by the second exercise – and there are really only 8 in the entire workout. I’ll share that one later – by the time I was done with the 20 minutes (I think I went a little over, because I HAD to take breaks between exercises), my heart rate monitor said I’d burned somewhere between 240 and 300 calories.

Once that option was denied to me, I decided to try the Fitness Magazine build-a-workout again. This time, very little jumping, not really cardio, but I took the exercises a bit fast-paced, and found myself sweating it out and not bothering my foot. It says an hour, but I was done in about 40 minutes, and was close to 400 cals burned in that time. It was a great, overall body workout.

Just thought I’d share. I promise I’m taking it easy on my foot this time…well, all right, I’ll admit, I’m taking it easy after doing a jump-aerobics deal and realizing later in the day how dumb that was when having a foot injury…and when my husband asked if I was taking care of my foot or “being stupid” and having to fess up that I was doing the latter.

No, I don’t learn things like this quickly.

It’s 2009! Hurray! While most people set resolutions, I don’t tend to any more, because they only seem to last a short while. We DO, however, have a couple of top-of-mind items that hopefully also only last a short while longer: Rich finding a job, and the Pasco house being sold.

I missed many friends while Rich and I were visiting family the past two weeks; my gym buddies and I never got together for a workout, and I’m bummed about that. But having all the Johnson clan together for a week, then catching up on work and such the next week, it just never happened. Next time, gals.

Those who know me, know my addiction to exercise. What some DON’T know is my recently-developed joy of road cycling. Visiting the Tri-Cities, going over the bridges a few times, I reminisced on my ridiculous rides with little to no food, overheating…riding from the Blue Bridge to the Cable Bridge just to see if my estimate of distance was correct and then realizing I was WAY too far away from home and not enough water for the rest of the ride. But I LOVED my weekend rides. I LOVED being along the river riding along Pasco, seeing some of the enormous houses and yards there were to see.

It made me miss the cycling – and I miss it more than I realized! I have an itch to get on my bike. However, there are two things keeping me from doing so: the cold (I really have no cycling gear, let alone cold-weather gear) and my clumsiness. My bike came with Crank Brothers’ eggbeaters, which you cannot get out of without turning your foot much farther than with Shimano SPDs. This little detail led to a few falls…one of which left me with what seems to be a permanent miscolored portion of skin on my left knee. I think God left it there to remind me that I should not get on my bike until I have different pedals – either Shimanos or regular flat pedals (and save the shoes for the bikes at the gym). It’s not really a scar, but it’s a dark spot on my knee from the last fall I took which was the worst. Thankfully, it was also in the driveway to our house in Pasco.

At any rate, I started looking at rides that are happening this year – I’m determined to do at least ONE ride this year, but that means I need to get out. And that means I need to find trails. I’ve heard of the Burke-Gilman, but a friend at work let me know that you can’t go very fast on the Burke-Gilman because so many others are also on the trail. There’s Green Lake, which will do for getting my feet back on me once I have new pedals, but it’s only 2.9 miles around, and typically packed…I was doing 25+ miles on Saturdays. So, I need to find pedals and I need to find trails, especially with minimal traffic.

And I need to wait until the weather warms up.

Oh, and get a bike pump so I can get the tires back up (they’re a little flat after being in storage for a couple months).

Until then, I might take advantage of the fact the cycling class bikes at the gym have odometers on them and do a 25+ mile ride once a week. It’s not quite the same as riding outdoors, but it will have to do for now.