Look Over There!

I have guest posted about my fitness regime--and something that happened to me at the gym yesterday--over at Elastic Waist. Enjoy!

Huffing (also see: Puffing)

You may think that since I haven't said anything about it, I quit going to the gym. Well, that is untrue! In fact, I am on my fourth week of my MWF schedule and have not missed a day. (If I don't make it on one day due to social commitments, I go the next day.)

If I at home bored, and can't think of anything to do, it actually occurs to me to go to the gym. Last night I didn't feel like watching television; I felt like going to the gym. (I only made it 20 minutes, because it turns out I was pretty wiped out, but at least I made it.) I have mostly been doing 30-minute workouts. What's the next step, do you think--more days per week, or more minutes? It's an interesting conundrum.

I have found that the heart rate monitors on the machines vary wildly, and I need to buy my own, I think, just for consistency's sake. Shannonk tells me that you strap the monitors to your chest and they make tiny communications with a watch you wear. Strapping on a thing on my chest, however, smacks of effort. Sometimes it seems like a lot of effort just to change my shoes. So I am skeptical. We'll see.

Oh, and our podcast topic for this week was exercise. I don't remember what I said, but I bet I said something!

New elliptical playlist song: Everything but the Girl, "Five Fathoms"

Blah Blah Cardio

I took Toni's advice to pust myself harder. Well, at least partially. (I'm referring to the comments of the previous entry in case you have no idea what I'm talking about.) I hit the gym last night and ended up on one of the ellipticals with arms. (The gym was pretty crowded.) I decided to try and see if I could get my heart rate up higher than my previous average (131-134) and sustain a workout at that rate.

With the arms, I was able to quickly get my heart rate up. In fact, I ended up at about 155 after a few minutes of warmup. I wondered, can I keep this going for a whole workout? I kept it up until the clock hit 25 minutes. I noticed I was sweating a lot more than usual (using the towel in the middle of the workout) so I could definitely feel the difference. And then I did a five-minute cooldown, which ended up being about 137 bpm. Higher than my previous average. I ended up with an average of 145.

Last night, I had to stretch a lot before getting to sleep. Today, my muscles are a little sore. I definitely feel like I worked out harder. I'm not sure if I could do this every time; I might have to work up to it. But I'm going to aim for the 140s next time and see how it goes.

This week I won't be going to the gym; I'll be going to my parents' house and using their pool. I'll definitely be mindful of the need to keep up my working out--do laps and so forth. But I love swimming so much that it feels like a total treat; not a workout at all.

Gym Report

Not being sure what to aim for in terms of exercise, I decided to start small. My goal was three days a week, 20 minutes on the elliptical. I know I should go more, go longer, add strength training, etc. But really I just want to get back in the gym-going habit.

So far, it's been working out! I was aiming for a MWF schedule. I went for 20 minutes on Monday and 22 minutes on Wednesday. (I decided somewhat arbitrarily to add two minutes each time.) There was a big work party on Friday night so I didn't go on Friday, vowing to make up for it on Saturday.

On Saturday I drove to a gym farther away from my house. (The one near my house is in the middle of the Berkeley farmer's market on Saturday--no thank you.) That one was pretty empty and even more ghetto than my original gym. I got an old elliptical with a broken heart-rate monitor. Some of the other ones didn't even have heart-rate monitors.

Speaking of which, maybe some of you will know this: the "weight loss" zone for cardio is lower (a lower heart rate) than the "cardio" zone. Which one is healthier? What heart rate should I be aiming for? Right now I am aiming at 135 or thereabouts, right on the boundary of "weight loss" and "cardio" but I have no idea what this means. What does this mean?

A-ny-way. 30 minutes on Saturday; pretty good. I wasn't going to go on Sunday but then Sunday night I found myself bored, and what better to do than to hit the gym? It was awesome, I guess because it was Sunday night--plenty of parking, empty gym. I sadly forgot my iPod, but then I got sucked into Remember the Titans on cable, so it was okay. 35 minutes!

Today my legs hurt. I was trudging up the stairs and one of the producers was like "girl, you were struggling getting up those stairs." I immediately said I overdid it at the gym--I guess to avoid the "fat chick can't haul her fat ass up the stairs" impression. Yikes.