Treadmill of Trouble

Tuesdays seem to be trouble for me. This morning I woke up at 5AM and clicked off the alarm before it went off hoping not to disturb my wife. Five minutes later my eyes snap open and I climb out of bed - that was a near thing.

I get to the gym trying to figure out what to do next. I think I'm going to need to be goal driven by someone (glances at trainer) like what she did with this "hold 144bpm for thirty minutes." I also need to know there are rest days or easier days or something to look forward to, ya know? That it's OK to work out at 133bpms for thirty minutes. I'm hoping that maybe it's one day cardio and one day weights. I'm feeling the need for upper body strength. My father told me that you just get weaker as you age, um I'm feeling that but maybe we can slow it down a bit.

I eye the treadmill, it hasn't wrecked my life yet and I want to start gathering metrics on what settings to use since I plan eventually to go machine hopping like the cool kids do.

I manage to get it into an interval state remembering what marathon man told me when he started using the machine. I set the slow pace for 2MPH and the high pace for 3MPH and start walking along. This is one of those days where I'm not into it. I trudge along making minor adjustments to the low setting upping it to 2.5mph and the incline to 2%.

My shoelace is untied, a chronic problem with these shoes, some serious design flaw.

Darn it!

I stop the machine, tie my shoe and restart the machine.

When I hit the fast pace I futz around with it until I'm at a slow jog/fast walk around 4.2mph and an incline of 2.5%

My shoelace is untied.

DAMMIT!

I stop the machine, tie my shoe and restart the machine.

Those settings begin to produce a nice sweat and puffing from me. When it's on the fast setting towards the end of this workout it would be possible but difficult to hold a conversation.

You can see from the graph that my heart rate climbed with little intervals of relief, I find that kinda cool.
Towards the end of the workout my trainer comes in. When I'm done I go over and bore her to tears with my 'war story' of the stairmaster. I have to cut that crap out - she's busy (just a point of clarification, she didn't say that but you ever find yourself going on and on about something, well like this blog I guess. Another lesson learned, I can try and get this babble out here and remain mum to others. Then if you're not my wife, who is FORCED to read this thing you're allowing me to bore you. Um... yeah). She tells me she's working on my routine today.

I stretch, do the sauna thing, shower and get to work where I'm frantically typing this in since work doesn't pay me to report on my ordeals in exercise.

I'm getting a sense of the battle ground here. As usual it will be in my mind, my second favorite organ. But we all know how weak my mind is, guess I'll be toughing that up too huh? Getting into the gym everyday and just doing it, that's where the fight will be I suspect. I understand better why most exercise folk like being outside, it's different.