It’s official. I am starting the new year with an injury. It can only go up from here, right? Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely hate being injured and not being able to run. Yet I also love how being injured forces me to hit a reset button and focus on cross-training. When it comes to cross-training, I usually choose to swim or cycle. I have never enjoyed exercising on the elliptical but it is time for a change.

Let’s get straight to it. These are my favorite hard effort elliptical workouts to keep us runners in shape.

Speed & Resistance

• 10:00 warmup
• 10:00 medium effort (4-5 resistance)
• 2:00 active recovery (1-2 resistance)
• 10:00 hard effort (6-8 resistance)
• 2:00 active recovery (1-2 resistance)
• 2×5:00 hard effort with 1:00 active recovery
• 10:00 cooldown.

Progression

• 10:00 warmup
• 5:00 resistance level 1
• 5:00 resistance level 2
• 5:00 resistance level 3
• 5:00 resistance level 4
• 5:00 resistance level 5
• 5:00 resistance level 6
• 2:00 resistance level 7
• 10:00 cooldown