I recently joined a new gym after over a four month hiatus from my previous gym and am still a little out of the loop. At my old gym I was able to go 35 minutes on the elliptical and 60 minutes on the treadmill. Things have changed.. lol. This morning while on the elliptical, ten minutes in and I was ready to throw in the towel.. I kept telling myself.. just go fifteen and you'll be okay. Well.. once I got to fifteen minutes I got into watching Regis and Kelly and happened to look down and saw I was at 17 minutes. I could have stopped there but I told myself, "What's three more minutes??" So, I pushed myself to get to 20 minutes. It felt good getting through that workout though there was no way I could have went 30.. not today anyway. I just wondered what little things some of you tell yourself to push yourself that extra mile, or that extra ten minutes to get you through.

I don't tell myself anything, I try instead to "distract" myself. I'll do what you did, look down, feeling I can't go on, and I'll lose myself in my little handheld solitaire game or in a TV program or a good book while on my stair stepper or when doing a treadmill. If I look again and still have time to go, start a new game, chapter, whatever. Just need to take my mind off the clock.

I follow my heart rate--our machines have the built in pulse monitors that SOMETIMES work... And when they do, that's what I go by. I find that I don't feel like quitting if I stay in the range for my pulse. Also, there are TV monitors, so I look at them from time to time. But mostly it's that I don't get tired out and want to quit--if I stay in the range, I could go all day.

I also like to burn over 100 calories per workout--today I was up to 182 on the elliptical (30 minutes). So that means a nice entry in my chart!

Jay

I just tell myself that I can quit, if I like being fat. I'm kind of drill sarg on myself though, comes from growing up with 3 of 4 parental units being full time service members