So I've been feeling good about my cardio workouts lately and feel like I've come a pretty long way. I started out just doing a regular-old elliptical, set at zero, and I'd just beast it for 30 minutes and be done. Then, I decided to spice things up and do 30 minutes on the elliptical + 30 minutes on some other machine, plus I'd go walking or something at my school's athletic complex walking track. Kept things pretty simple, for the most part.

Fast forward to now, at my current gym:

I started by doing the same thing I did at the gym while I was at university, but then one day while I was on the treadmill I saw this girl beasting it pretty hardcore on the elliptical that doesn't have the arm-thingies on it. She looked like she was getting a pretty good workout, so I decided to move to that machine and started doing those "cross training" workouts with all the hills and what-not. I got some pretty hard workouts out of those, so I thank that girl for giving me inspiration.

Well, now, those workouts have become too easy, so I moved back to the original elliptical. Except now, I'm doing the cross-country training program with all the ridiculous hills at ridiculous resistances and we come to my NSV: there's a particular "hill" during this workout that feels like I'm jogging through wet cement. When I first started, I would MAYBE hit 75 strides, and sometimes the little message on the machine would yell at me for not moving fast enough, haha! Well now, I'm hitting 100 strides and it feels more like jogging through mud instead of wet cement. That made me feel really good, and I don't know what I'm going to do once THAT becomes too easy.

Just thought I'd share my nice, long exercise story with y'all!

That's a great NSV!!

Haha, I always get inspiration from people using machines at my gym, too. I'm still too scared to use the stair master again.... I remember when I was 170lbs and had no problem with it.

Oh gosh, I'm terrified of the stair master! It just looks big and scary and NO! lol

and thank you so much for sharing, you will inspire someone I'm sure

That is an awesome feeling and inspiring!! To me nothing is more motivating than seeing how much stronger you get with each workout. Keep it up!