Because it’s not a run day . . . (XT)

One Day at a Time

. . . but exercise makes me feel better. I had to do something. I’ve been off from work all day, and depressed. I can sort of of put my finger on why . . . several reasons actually. But it seems rather systemic, and I can imagine if any or all of these reasons suddenly went away, it wouldn’t drastically change how I feel. I don’t know. They won’t all just suddenly go away so I’m not going to be able to test this hypothesis. I’m planning on writing an entry about all of this later. I know my readers probably don’t want to hear it. But it’s my diary. I need to get it out, even if I’m just writing it for myself.

I knew working out would make me feel better, and it did. Briefly. I did some weightlifting. But this entry is about the cycling. I’m not consistent enough with weights to bother logging that workout. What’s to log anyway? I don’t know all the terminology, I just use 20 – 40 lb weights and do every type of workout I can think of to hit the main muscle groups.

Stationary bike workout logged below. A cool feature of the bike is that you can do a target heart rate exercise and it will periodically adjust the resistance so you will maintain your target heart rate. I put in 120bpm. I didn’t want to do anything crazy like 150bpm, since I fully intend on doing a solid run tomorrow. The machine spent almost the entire half hour on the lowest resistance since I pedalled so fast. If I had slowed down, my heart rate would have decreased enough to signal a higher resistance. That only happened once, for like a 1 minute stretch early on, when my heart rate was just getting going. At times I was pedalling so fast I got up to 150bpm, but I’d say I averaged around 130bpm. Why so fast? I just HAD to make 10 miles in the half hour. Actually I ended up over 11 miles in the half hour. When will I learn, it’s not about distance, but time, heart rate, and resistance (or grade in the case of running)? My body doesn’t give a damn what the distance is. It’s time spent and heart rate that conditions and it’s resistance/grade that helps muscle strength. Same with the running. I’m too caught up with distance. There are other factors, often times more important, at least for training. Yes, distance IS important for a set race, of course.

-AR

PS: Come to think of it . . . this workout was way too damn easy. I’m not sure it did me ANY good. My legs aren’t burning or hurting half an hour later here, so it didn’t do anything for me. Oh well. At least that will mean I should not have any problems running tomorrow, right?

PPS: Ah, but it did briefly make me feel better, as I said. So I guess it did do something for me after all.

Start time approximately 8:55 PM EST on 01/22/2011. Total cycling distance 11.04 miles (17.77K). Total cycling time 30:00. AVG cycling pace 2:42min/mile (22.1mph). AVG HR: 130bpm. Weather Conditions: Indoors.