Run in an ellipse...

My inability to manage the elliptical machine is well-documented (see previous post). My legs are just too long to get a meaningful workout. And me on an elliptical probably looks like a giraffe trying to ride a tricycle. It's just wrong.

But, then I spied the Precor AMT off in a corner of the cardio room, facing a concrete pillar, and looking like just another cardio machine. Aside: In order to make indoor training bearable, I jump from machine to machine for 10-15 minutes at a time... and I had not tried/seen this one before. It looked like a cross between a stair-stepper and an elliptical. And when I started up on it, it felt as if I was bounding up stairs. I grasped the hand-poles and as I sped up my cadence, something crazy happened.... my stride switched from a bouncy stair-step to an almost run. The closest an elliptical has ever gotten to mimicking an actual stride!

Now it wasn’t perfect, the “stride” was a shortened, jogging version of my stride, but it was something. And it had me working hard. The only problem... I was working hard on the lowest resistance! I can’t imagine what weaker runners have to do to get full extensions (or maybe I am delusional and also one of the “weaker” runners now). Either way, it felt really great to get my heart rate over 120 and feel the burn in my quads. Runners — tell your gym to get one of these.

Despite all, I couldn’t resist running for 10 minutes on the treadmill. My PF is coming along. I’m not tentative to step on it anymore, so I am not favoring that leg and bollixing my right leg in the process. But, there is still more pain and discomfort than I would like and I am not about to run more than 20 minutes to find out if the pain “goes away”.