Elliptical Machine

Tonight was supposed to be a 7 mile run outside but just walking to the gym demonstrated how wise my decision was in keeping it indoors this evening: everything is iced over. I managed to walk all of 500 feet to the gym without slipping, fortunately, but that was the easy part. I really despise the treadmill so before I left, I wrote down a treadmill workout that I found on another running blog to keep me going. I did an easy 2 mile warm up first. The workout was 0-3 minutes of 6.0 mph at 4% incline, 3-5 minutes of 7 mph at 6% (!!!!!) incline, etc. until you complete 30 minutes. What the heck? I got through about 8 minutes before almost flying off the back. Was the author of this smoking crack? Who can go this hard? I definitely can't. So I resigned myself to another slow two miles (6.0 mph at .5% incline.) Ahhhh. Relief. THEN, because I had to fulfill 7 miles worth of running, and was dead, I tried the elliptical machine. I admit that I am one of those people who look smugly at the elliptical-ers from my haughty perch on the treadmill. They think they're runners. Hmmph. But sometimes low impact cardio is just what you need. I set the machine to 10k and hoped for the best. Within two minutes, I couldn't feel my feet. No matter, I kept going. At the end, the machine said I burned about 800 calories. It didn't really feel like it...but ok, elliptical machine! I'll take it. All in all, there just isn't anything like running.