The best way I can describe it is if you’ve ever had a dream where you fall. You have that sensation of falling and then you wake up startled. I have that same feeling sometimes when I’m awake. Not all the time, just sometimes. I searched for it online, and I found a few articles about it (I can’t find them now of course) and it’s not too rare I don’t think, but it’s not too common either. There’s not much to be done about it though from what I remember. You just have to go through it until is passes.

Today’s exercising sort of helped, but that feeling is still there at times. Not as much, but it’s not gone yet. I just need to push through it, and it will eventually go away. It always does. It’s just annoying when it happens. Doesn’t help the old confidence either. In the past, once it does go away, I still hesitate on certain things, because I’m expecting it to happen.

That’s the best I can do to explain things. Maybe it’s vertigo or labyrinthitis (a friend of mine who also has cerebral palsy has labyrinthitis). That could be exactly it. Because no matter what, every time I go to the dentist and they lean the chair back, I feel like I’m going to fall out! I‘ve had that feeling since I was a kid.

Makes ya think.

I told myself to get on the elliptical and do just .1 mile at a time. For the first 10th of a mile I told myself to just use the side railings for support and not use the arm poles on my elliptical. I did, and yes it felt unsteady at first, but it did get easier. I got off and took a minute, then told myself to get on again for another 10th of a mile, and this time use the arm poles. Again, it felt unsteady, but got easier. After that I took it a 10th of a mile at a time. I did 1/2 mile and it was slower than normal (about 17 minutes instead of 15), but that’s OK. I wasn’t going for speed, just for the movement.

The scariest part was getting on and off. Not scary as in petrified, but still a little scary. I kept repeating that phrase over and over, and I got through it. Getting on and off didn’t get easier, but I did deal with it and got it done.

I then prepared for my shower, and brought in my “shower shoes” (just a pair of pool shoes). I haven’t needed those shoes since March or so, and I brought them in just in case. But, I persevered, and got in without them.

I won’t say the string of bad balance days are over yet, but they might coming to an end. I hope so anyway. And until it is over, I’ll feel the fear and do it anyway.

*Posted this on my SparkPeople blog, and decided to post it here also.

I don’t know what Anna Kournikova’s background is as far as being a personal trainer, but I thought her approach was a little unsympathetic. She told one contestant to basically suck it up and deal with it when the teams got rearranged. She’s not the best when it comes to capitalizing on the contestants breakthrough moments. There are times when a contestant is worked out so hard they have a mental breakthrough. On an episode a few weeks ago, one contestant (I forget who it was now, Becky maybe?) was definitely at that breakthrough moment (the times when Jillian Michaels would ask “why are you here?” over and over), and Anna didn’t get it.

She seems like a nice person on camera, and I know she’s a wonderful tennis player. But I don’t think Anna Kourniva is cut out for the personal trainer scene. I don’t know if she realized that herself and left the show on her own, or if she was let go by the higher ups, but I hope she realized it herself and stepped down.

There’s no mention yet on who will be replacing her, if anyone. Personally I think Bob Harper and Dolvett Quince could do nicely by themselves. They’ve both got the personal trainer background experience, and they both are in-tune with how the contestants are feeling. They capitalize on breakthrough moments. Both Bob and Dolvett really listen to what the contestants have to say. They don’t just nod in agreement and tell them to deal with it.

Season 13 of The Biggest Loser starts January 3, and it will interesting to see who the trainers are. I haven’t heard anything about Dolvett leaving, so it will probably be Dolvett and Bob for sure, and possibly someone new. We shall see.

The cause? Fragile X Syndrome. A childhood friend of mine has a son with Fragile X and for the last 4 years has been setting up a charity 5k run/walk event at the Miami Metro Zoo.

I’m a bit bummed I wasn’t able to do a mile today for it. I try to do it every year when I can. But Monday will be the day. Read more about Fragile X Syndrome here. Hope the event went well today!

We think he stopped eating his dry cat food sometime in the last few weeks. We would give him bits of chicken or tuna and he would scarf that down and love it. However, sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning a switch went off in him. Monday morning he only had a bite or two of chicken then turned away from it. I tried several times throughout the day, but he wasn’t interested.

What really got me…was early Monday afternoon. He’d take a few steps then would lie down. A while later he’d take a few steps then would lie back down. So, he definitely wasn’t comfortable at that point. We made the decision to take him the next morning. Tuesday morning came along and he wouldn’t even drink water. So, I pretty much knew what was going to happen.

The vet ran some tests, and determined Paws was dehydrated, anemic and worst of all was in kidney failure. I knew he was in kidney failure. That morning I actually said “I bet he’s in renal failure”. Sure enough. So that was that. No waffling in our decision. It had to be done. And it was done quick.

Yes, we were asked if we wanted to stay while it was done, and yes we ended up staying. It was tough, but in the end I’m glad I stayed. I don’t know if I would do it again. I went back and forth a lot, and not just in the last few days. About 9 month ago, my brother in-law and his wife had to put their dog down. Then a few months later, my sister and her family had to put one of their dogs down.

I knew the time for Paws was coming, so I’d been thinking about it for a long time. Flip flopping in my decision all the time. I don’t know if I would do it again. We have two more cats, and I have no clue what I’ll do then. Knowing me, I probably will. But I really don’t know. The death of a pet is never easy, and that is a personal choice every time. No right or wrong answer.

Anyway, he was a good cat, and he will be missed. Most of the posts for this blog were written with him in my lap, and it’s strange not to have him here now.

Paws: February (or March) 1996 – November 1, 2011

Ok then. Onto happier news. Before this whole bad week started, I met one of my goals, and I also met one of my un-made goals that I was going to make for November. First, on Sunday, October 30, I managed to do 1/2 mile on the elliptical with no breaks. That same day, I decided to go for a full mile. I took breaks after every .2 mile and then did the last .1 mile. Felt good to finally be able to go for about 15 minutes straight.

I took a few days off this week obviously. I wasn’t in a good frame of mind to get much of anything done. But on Thursday, I got back to it. I did 1/2 mile Thursday and another 1/2 mile today, just to get my legs moving a bit. I plan to do one mile tomorrow (will write about that another time) for a special cause.

I’ve got some pictures from the virtual walk site saved, so I’ll add those now. This entry is a bit long, so don’t want to write a whole novel here.

Mile 310.2                                                               Mile 311

Mile 311.6                                                               Mile 312

Mile 313                                                                 Mile 313.6

Mile 314

Keep moving, and give your pet a squeeze.

I think on my non strength training days I’ll go a bit longer and see how long I can go before my first break. I think I could have made it the whole 1/2 mile without stopping, but I think it would have been tough. On the days I do strength training, I’ll play it by ear. I’ll go at least a half mile, but I won’t worry about how many breaks I take. If I feel like going longer, I will, if I don’t, I won’t.

I am making progress though. I had a mental goal for the end of October. To be able to go 1/2 mile without stopping. I will totally make that goal. I think I’ll be able to do that in the next few days actually.

Making progress on the virtual walk also. Since my last post, I’ve gone 3 more miles. Here are the pictures from the site.

Mile 306.6                                                                Mile 307.2

Mile 307.8                                                                Mile 308.4

Mile 309                                                                   Mile 309.6

Have a great weekend, and keep moving!!

But I get the job done. I’m only going 1/2 mile at a time, between 15 and 16 minutes, and I’m beginning to feel the impatience. I want to go longer, I want to go farther, but it that smart? I told myself a few weeks ago I would not go more than 1/2 mile until I could do that 1/2 mile with no breaks. I’m still taking two, sometimes three, breaks. But, the other day I did manage to go .3 mile before my first break.

I’m thinking about going longer, but don’t know if I should. My thinking is this. If I go more than 1/2 mile, will that help my endurance and help me do the 1/2 mile with no breaks eventually? Or will going longer cause some sort of pain and injury? Should I just stick with my plan and only do 1/2 mile until I can do it one shot? I don’t know how long that will take. I’ll give it until the end of this week before I decide. And if I do increase my mileage, I’ll only do it in 1/10 increments.

Feet and ankles are still doing fine. I am no longer using the towel under my foot. It wasn’t intentional, but having the towel under my foot made it easier to move my left foot over. The towel slipped off while I was on it, and I was still able to move my foot over without a problem. Big accomplishment there. I’ve never been able to do that before. Maybe it’s partially due to the narrower stance. In any case, I didn’t use the two at all and was able to correct my foot position without it.

We’ll see what I end up doing. I can’t decide yet. I’m flip flopping quite a bit. I might do a longer workout one day to start with, then follow it up the next day with a shorter one. We shall see.

For now though, here are the latest pictures from the virtual walk site.

Mile 303.2                                                               Mile 303.6

Mile 304.2 (motorcycles and tractors)                     Mile 304.6

Mile 305.2                                                               Mile 305.6

Mile 306.2

Good thing about going 1/2 mile at a time, is there are more pictures to share! Here are quite a few pictures I’ve been saving since I’ve been back on the elliptical.

Mile 299.2                                                           Mile 299.6

Mile 300.2!!!!                                                      Mile 300.6

Mile 301.2                                                           Mile 301.6

Mile 302.2                                                          Mile 302.6

I’m taking frequent days off. My muscles in my legs and back are still adjusting, and I think it’s a smart idea to not push too hard yet. It’s tough for me to not get on every day, but I know my back and legs will thank me for it. Just the other day, I did my half mile, and at the end, my legs felt like Jell-O and I could hardly stand up because they were so fatigued. It will get easier, I just need to be patient.

There are two things I’ve had to adapt for. One of being my right hand on the arm poll, and the other being my left foot on the left foot pedal. The arm polls are at a different angle and are wider apart than my old machine. Because of that, every time I start the pedals and poles moving, my right hand slides awkwardly on the arm poll and it creates a sort of rug burn in between my thumb and forefinger. I have adapted to this by wearing a baseball glove on my right hand. That seems to solve that problem.

The problem with my left foot is that it tends to slide over to the inner side of the pedal and my foot rubs against the side. When I wear my tennis shoes, this isn’t really a problem, but I am wearing my Vibram Five Finger shoes (KSO review). These shoes are made out of a very thin fabric, so my foot doesn’t have much protection and I end up getting a spot on my foot that gets rubbed funny. To deal with this problem, I put down a folded hand towel under my foot. It took a little while to figure out how to fold the towel and place it so it would not slide out from under my foot as I worked out. I think I have it figured out now though.

I have made it to my first goal of doing 1/2 mile, although I’m still taking breaks like I said before. I plan on updating my mileage progress in a different post, because I have several pictures to upload and share from the virtual walk site.

I am very excited to say that I think wearing my Vibram Five Finger shoes will not be a problem on this machine. On my old machine I think my problem was the stance was too wide and it created excess pressure on my ankle. Because the stance on this machine is narrower, I think there will be less pressure and it won’t be a problem. I think I’ve only worn my tennis shoes for the first two or three workouts. I’ve worn my Five Fingers the rest of the time. If at any point I do feel discomfort in my feet, I’ll go back to wearing my tennis shoes. But for now everything seems to be OK.

I don’t want to overload one post with all of my updates. So this post is this going to be about how I’ve been getting used to my new machine. Stay tuned for more updates soon.

As promised, here are a few pictures of some of the features I love about my new elliptical.

Nice looking machine all set up and ready to go. Note the piece of paper hanging on the wall. It’s got mileage information on it so I know how many revolutions is equal to a certain distance. I wrote it in 1/10 mile increments. Good thing too, as I only did .2 of a mile yesterday.

Big logo on the side. Not too “in your face”.

Love the console on the machine. The display color is blue (was very happy about that), and it displays how long you’ve been on (upper left), revolutions (upper right), calories burned (lower left), wattage output (low middle, not sure what it means), and RPMs (revolutions per minute).

On the lower portion of the console is a speaker. You see that black cord hanging down on the left side?

That’s a power cord you plug into your mp3 player or cd player. Pretty nice! I tried it out with my iPod, and the sound quality is excellent. I’ll be using that for sure whenever I’m on it. No more ear buds falling out midway through my workout.

At the very top of the console is the fan. I totally forgot to turn it on during my workout, but I’ll remember next time. I got so used to getting on the elliptical and not turning on the fan, I just spaced it. The fan has two speeds, high and low. There’s a third fan option called “auto fan”, where the fan increases or decreases depending on how fast you’re pedaling. I don’t think I’ll fool around with that, I plan to have it on high the entire time.

In the middle of the console there’s an ifit thing. I’ve never played around with ifit (it was on my old elliptical also), so I’m not sure how it works. I think you need an ifit card of some sort, and you plug that card into the slot and pick a workout that you can download from their website. Not positive, so I may be completely wrong.

Also in the middle of the console, you’ll see the start button (it turns on the screen if it’s been idle for 5 minutes, or you can move the pedals to turn it on), the display button (you can pick and choose what you want to see. I plan on showing everything all the time. Time, calories, RPMs, etc.), workouts button (the machine comes with some pre-set workouts), and the enter button with arrows (not sure what they do yet, but I think the left and right arrows are for scrolling through the pre-set programs and the enter button selects a workout).

On either side of the console, there are numbers. On the left you’ll see 1-10 and on the right you’ll see 11-20. Those are the resistance levels. Push a numbered button and after a few seconds, it will change the resistance. Twenty levels of resistance! My old machine only had 10 levels, and I only got up to level 4 when I used the resistance.

I didn’t get a good picture of them, but on the very bottom of the console are the hand grips you hold onto to get your heart rate.

Think that pretty much covers the console.

These are the foot pedals. Nice and narrow stance. No more awkward wide legged stance. I’m hoping that the narrower stance will make it easier to use my Vibram Five Fingers. I think the wide stance of the old machine caused my ankle issue a year ago. We’ll have to see. I might get less blisters too. I need to pay attention when I get on next time to see if I’m pushing with my whole foot now or if I’m still pushing with the insides on my feet.

This is the water bottle holder. I don’t think I’ll use it, because I need to stop and get off entirely to get a drink. I don’t have the balance to take one hand off the pole and grab a bottle and drink. My husband will probably use it though.

The bottle holder is one thing I was sort of worried about. On my other machine my knees kept hitting the water bottle holder, so we had to take it off. I do not hit this one at all, don’t even come close to it.

This is the stride adjuster thing-a-ma-bob. You pull out the knob and move it up or down to the stride you want. You can pick 18’’, 20’’ or 22’’. I like the 20’’ the best. I haven’t tried using the knob myself, but my husband says he needs to grease it because it feels “gummy” when he moves it.

This was a complete surprise to me. What is this you ask? It’s a wall adapter! No more batteries for me! The console runs off of electricity. I was not expecting this at all. I don’t remember the specifications on the Sears site saying anything about this. I am very happy. One of my major complaints with my old machine was the fact that the display screen flickered on and off no matter if it had new batteries or not. The coils in the battery compartment got squished and I basically just gave up on it.

So this was a very unexpected and nice surprise. When it first came, I actually skimmed through the owner’s manual to see what kind of batteries I needed. Didn’t see anything in the book. There was a small box included with all the parts, and it was the wall adapter. Cool beans man (that was for you Monique)!

And finally, this is my mileage chart. I have revolutions from .1 mile all the way to 2 miles (in .1 increments) for all three stride lengths. And the black thing in front of it is one of the arm poles. I couldn’t get a clear shot without getting it in there.

There you have it. The features of my new elliptical. So far, I love it. I can’t think of anything I don’t like about it. I’ve only been on it once, but I am very happy with it.

We’ll see how long it will take me to get up to a mile again. Hopefully it won’t take me too long.

Have a good day and a great weekend!