On Friday, my afternoon nap was summarily interrupted by a great commotion in the office. Puzzled, my co-workers and I were soon herded over to the main cubicle area to see a gaggle of chattering women arguing excitedly about a weight loss competition... at which point my boss poked his head out of his office curiously as well. And thus it was born, the Green Dot Fitness Challenge.
There are two categories, Weight Loss and Body Fat Percentage, with 3-4 contestants per category, and 1 "coach" per contestant. I was quickly recruited to be a coach for a contestant, but much to my consternation, my contestant turned out to be one of the thinnest ones there. Thank goodness for the % change rule!
Unbeknownst to the contestants, I too am on a quest for improvement. To mark my symbolic return to the world of the athletes... I bit the bullet and stepped on the scale on Friday too. After all, there's got to be a starting point. It might be an interesting experiment to track my progress over time. Weight, fat %, resting HR vs. amount of training. I sort of failed in figuring out a good way to consistently measure resting HR, but as it stands, this is what's on the starting line: 116 pounds, ~65 resting HR. My aspirational goal is to lose 14 pounds and 20 beats per minute.
Let the games begin!
Sunday 07/01: Day 3 and I'm already struggling with motivational issues. Doesn't help that its like suddenly 100 degrees out... movie with Dagny to escape the weather. Was highly contemplating a day off, but trundled out on the bike at 6:30 pm. 23 miles, 1:25 ride time, 16.1 mph average, forgot HR monitor. First lap with Peter, time goes by so much more quickly with company. Slogged through 4 more to crawl over the 20 mile mark and then headed home the short way.
Another "embarassed to call myself an athlete" day. Legs feel heavy and dull. Passed by ~12 year old looking girl... *calamity of the world*. She was stopped half a lap later though, so I'll choose to believe it was just a random sprint. Had one quick lap after ending up in a battle up the slightly uphill portion with a middle aged man in a discovery channel jersey. Quickly reached the point where I wanted to start huffing and puffing, but didn't want to show weakness... Narrowly edged him out around the turn to the downhill side after which he dropped back so I went back to creaking around at a slow pace.
Monday 07/02: 23.3 miles, 1:27:30, 15.8 mph average, HR back in the 170's. Arrrrgggghhhhhh.... frustrated with the total lack of progress. Had planned an off day, but actually felt good in the morning after getting a good night of sleep. Actually felt optimistic for a change, that maybe this ride would be good, but was quickly proven wrong. Started out well, but everything fell apart after lap 3... crawled painfully through 2 more laps before heading back. Really hammered up that little hill coming out of the Rose Bowl out of frustration. HR got up to 200 bpm. Felt a bit better after that.
Tuesday 07/03: Physical Therapy Day 1. Weird balancing and strengthening exercises... not a fan of the lunges. Would have greatly preferred towel scrunching, electrostim and a calf massage :). Went to gym to do cursory shoulders, upper body, core strengthening, then 30 minutes on the stationary bike. HR 130-150, cadence 105+, felt weird... uncomfortable but not... exerted, per se. Not a fan of the stationary bike, so boring... was all I could do to get through 30 minutes.
Wednesday 07/04: Happy 4th of July! Morning ride for the first time in months, ~32 miles, 2:10 with Peter to the River trails until the base of the 39. Longest ride since the injury. Really happy to be not at the Rose Bowl for a change... fantastic for about 1 hour, okay until 1:45 and then fading badly last stretch on California... holy moly, I am out of shape >:( ... Learned that "sprinting" entails a technique, and not just pedaling as hard as you can... meh.
Thursday 07/05: Rest day in order to be "Best of Small Town America" Tourguide for Aunt Mariko and Cousin Hana. Still sore from PT, really not a fan of the personal trainer aspect, lets just stick to the ankle specific exercises... meh. Lots of walking, went to Farmer's Market, fell in love ... with a potato! SO INCREDIBLY TASTY: http://www.theproducehunter.com/productdisplay.asp?ID=2089Friday 07/06: Finally, a halfway decent ride! 23.3 miles, 1:23, 16.8 mph average. 5 laps around the Rose Bowl, felt good and not wiped out at the end, wanted a few more, but didn't have time before leaving for San Diego. Hopefully this means I'm ready to graduate from the 80-90 minute rides. 2nd toe feels funny, like a deep itching somewhere in the joint. Doesn't hurt though, no swelling, full range of motion, so decided to let it be. Ian suggested taking the two bones and grinding them together to scratch the itch.
Hurried on home, shower, pack and then piled bikes, Peter and Ian into car and headed to KB's in SD. Fantastic meal of chicken and biscuits and Easter M&Ms before Peter and I continued on to SD proper. Excited about new rides out here this weekend!
Saturday 07/07: 33 miles, 2:17, 14.2 mph average on 101 Highway north along the coast in SD with Peter. Should have known not to expect TWO encouraging rides in a row... Nothing in SD is flat... you're either going uphill or downhill, for the cardiovascularly deficient, this is totally brutal. Things that don't even really register as climbs before suddenly feel continually taxing.
Found out pretty early that the only way I could make it up the hills was to just crank hard on the downhill and push through as much of the hill as possible, then stand up and mash the pedals down to get up the extra parts where you run out of momentum. Unfortunately, this strategy didn't exactly work for the last climb (~ 1 mile) up to get back to the area where we parked the car... almost died. Rapidly, the climb rate decreased to like 4 mph, after which I couldn't go any slower without falling over, so my body went into panic mode and I had one of those airway constriction attacks that used to happen a lot last spring/summer, the last time I was this out of shape. All sorts of yahoos passed me over the course of this 1 mile... fat people, people riding $100 walmart bikes, people wearing sneakers and leggings, old ladies... wanted to crawl into a hole and die of shame.
Went to wedding later and ate 2 pieces of delicious strawberry apricot wedding cake to soothe the pain.
Lets take a look at Week 1 Totals: ~8:45 riding for 135 miles, 30 minutes of stationary, two grueling sessions of physical therapy and one weights and core strengthening. Gotta keep on the ball with the core strengthening and such.
8 comments:
Having a goal to lower your resting heart rate is sort of ridiculous. Sure, athletes will often have different natural resting heart rates, but a lot of it is sort of genetic. We can't all have resting heart rates of 30bpm... just like your maximum heart rate (which I bet is like 217, because I recollect you hit 212 during your AT test) is genetic. It's not necessarily significant that someone's resting heart rate is lower than yours, or that your max is higher than theirs.
Also, don't be discouraged, you are doing awesome. And soon enough you wont be complaining about feeling out of shape, you'll be like "dammit, I'm going 34 miles an hour uphill and I still can't get my heart rate above 130? what is this crap?!" Yeah, dont worry, it'll come soon enough.
The thought of you at 102 pounds makes me want to barf.
Kangway, I do think that within every individual, a lower resting HR corresponds to more fitness, even if you can't compare that to someone else's minimum HR. Right now, I just want a HR that's not my current one... since it really sucks to be the type of person who's laboring for breath after calming climbing more than one flight of stairs....
Arturo Barrios has the HR world record (I think still does) at 23 bpm. I'm not aiming for that... but I think 45 is pretty reasonable given that many of our non olympic calibre peers achieve HR in the 30's.
KB, I won't take any snide comments about weight from a person who wants to restrict their caloric intake at a time when they are exercizing for 3 hours a day and is rocking at life, missy.
Yeah, but making a goal out of it just seems a little out there. I think there are too many factors that go into it that you don't know. For instance, pretend you never started running or doing really anything active. What's to say your resting heart rate wouldn't be 85? So maybe having one of 65 is pretty good. In that sense, getting it down to 45 would be even more ridiculous.
Plus, I feel like it's one thing that's certainly out of control. Maybe it's just my past experience, but even when I'm in the best shape of my life my resting heart rate is really never below 65bpm, maybe 63 is a record. When I'm out of shape it seems like it can go up to maybe 70bpm. But see, I would never expect, even if I were able to ascend to a level where running 100mpw is regular, that my heart rate would drop to the 40's, maybe high 50's at most. But then again, throughout the course of a season it's not improvement in resting heart rate or weight that we look at to define success... it's the performances.
Per the HR debate, I am going to take Kangway's side here. We both know your max HR is rediculously high (like I also suspect mine is). So, I have no medical basis for this, but doesn't it seem reasonable that if your max HR is 200+ your resting HR might be a little elevated, also? In other words, Megumi is like one of those little baby birds or a rabbit or some other tiny creature where the HR is always really high because that's just the way it is.
In a similar vein, how do you find out your max HR? Is that what the treadmill test is for? I want to do that when I'm back in Pasadena.
Yeah there are all sorts of treadmill tests for you find out MaxHR. I think you also might able just to do one on a track, or go find a really big hill and run up it. The one we did before was probably too long to find a really good MaxHR (although I think we got up there). I think if we do a shorter test, where the intensity ramps up faster and faster, then you'll find a good MaxHR.
my grandpa had a really low resting heart rate when he was on a respirator.
if you really want to lower your heart rate, just stop eating completely. this will cause your organs to shut down one by one, starting with things like livers and stomachs and gradually moving on towards heart and brain. just before you die you will teach arturo barrios a lesson he will never forget.
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