Preparing, preparing - working, working

I know I have been absent almost a week. But not idle.

The Blogging A to Z Challenge - the prep work for the April 2011 Challenge is taking some time. I have been picking topics, snapping pictures, writing posts all in preparation for April 1st. It didn't seem like such a big deal when I signed up, but now I see that this challenge could be pretty difficult to sustain. There are no negative consequences to missing posts or not keeping up, and it is a challenge for sure. Haven't even started and I am feeling the pressure.

My walks continue to be great, but alittle shorter than normal in the last week. I think they are shorter because I started Curves last week. I made some interesting discoveries about myself:

• I wasn't sore from the first sessions. That is good.
• I wasn't as tired leaving the gym as I anticipated. I did feel that I had worked pretty hard. That is good.
• I do seem to run out of steam during my walks around the 30 minute mark. That is not so good. I think I have just run out of available energy. Need to improve.
• My energy levels overall have picked up noticeably from January. That is good.
• The flexibility of going to Curves on my schedule rather than on a class schedule is a big improvement. I have worked harder this week in total than in previous weeks. That is very good.

The best news is that the Curves program has greatly improved over my experience from 2 years ago. The new program is called Curves Smart. Curves equipment now is electronically tailored to you and your progress. As you improve, it senses these improvements and puts more resistance in the machines - upping your effort. This is great news. When I used Curves several years ago, as you improved, you seemed to work less - so to improve your effort you needed to increase your repetitions or go around the circuit more times. Now that is not necessary. And at the end of each work out you can see your progress on a computer terminal. It is a very positive improvement.

So things are looking up - I haven't blogged much, but progress is being made.