Body fat, abs, stair-stepper and 9.2 miles.

What a great day!  It rained all night and I was afraid I might be looking for a cardio replacement to my long run this morning.  By the time I was on my way to the gym at 7:45 am to meet with Misty, the clouds were dispersing and it seemed the sun might even come out.

I got to the gym and the first thing on the agenda was for Misty to do another body assessment on me to compare with my numbers from 2 weeks ago.  And the exciting news....while my weight was exactly the same, my waist measurement was down 1/2 an inch and the best thing was that my body fat percentage was down by 3%.  I went from 25.5% two weeks ago to 22.5% this morning.  That's actually really good and means that I'm losing fat and gaining muscle.  Even Misty was surprised by that much change and had actually warned me that my numbers might initially go up before starting to go down, so I am pretty happy.  It's very motivating to have evidence that what I'm doing is working.

After we finished all of that fun stuff, we headed down to the weight room where Misty showed me a few sets of ab exercises: leg drops to reverse crunch, scissors, knees to chest and side to side rotations using a medicine ball - all done while "balanced" on a weight bench.  She also showed me a few alternatives to use other times during the week, using an exercise ball and the incline bench.  Today's realization (because I have them every day, anymore):  I could do 100 regular sit-ups or crunches just lying on the floor, and I can even easily hold a plank for a couple of minutes, but trying to do ab exercises while also balancing on a bench or a stability ball??  Nah.  I have very little stabilizing muscle strength.  I was wobbling all over the place.  I definitely need to work on that.

After we finished core work, we got on a couple of stair-stepper machines and did about 40-45 minutes of cardio on there before I came home, swapped my sweat-soaked tank top for a dry one, then headed outside for a run.  I did a 9.2 mile loop and I just took it easy and enjoyed myself.  Saturday is the one day I'm "allowed" to basically do as much cardio as I want, and typically it will be a day reserved for my longest runs.  I figured that between the 45 minutes I spent on the StairMaster and the hour and 40 minutes I spent running, I got in a great workout.