A Failed Attempt

I woke up in high spirits figuring today I'd try to go for forty-five minutes with an average heart rate of 150. Alas, it was not to be. There were weird scenes inside the gold mine of my body I guess.

I hop on the elliptical next to 'Everest' which is what I think of when I see this person working out on an elliptical. They look just like those guys plodding up some serious slope on Mt. Everest working those two poles they use, waist deep in snow, which is exactly what I would look like if I had the machine set to the same level. I mentally shrug and plug in my numbers except I put in 231 for my weight since I've lost six pounds (kinda proud of that), setting the machine for '8' which is what I used last time to get me in the 144 zone.

I hum along for a minute or so... this is easy... huh?

Around minute three I go to 9 and at minute four I go to 10. Ten seems to do the trick, and my heart rate is around 140 but at least its climbing. I trudge along feeling the burn in my thighs and wondering if this sudden ease is because I lost six pounds? The Garmin is saying I'm in zone 3.8 and the elliptical is telling me I'm at the upper end of 'Cardio' and not in 'Peak.'

OK, what the heck? I try to go faster to get the heart rate to climb and manage to get to 150bpms but I don't have the leg strength for it and can't hold it, no matter how I fiddle with the levels (8, 9, 10) DAMMIT!

I half-heartedly try to go for an average of 144 for the entire workout but it's just not gonna happen. Am I doomed to a life on that Stairmaster? (shudders).

With about ten minutes left in the workout a buddy comes in. He's telling me that music helps get you through it while plugging in his iPod. My inner Catholic kicks in and starts harping that I got in this weight-out-of-shape JAM all by myself and that I have no reason WHAT-SO-EVER to enjoy music while getting out of it. Just close captioned high def TVs showing news and loud generic Rave music for you pal!

I don't recall my reply but I do recall that I could hold a conversation (it would be 'puffy') fairly easily.

Times up. I stretch a bit and head to work after my shower.

I'm discouraged but while pondering it in the sauna I think I'm being too aggressive. Your thoughts, my gentle readers? What I'm thinking is the best course is to attempt to hold this 144bpm average for a week or two before going for 150.

Here's the chart of the entire workout including cool down:

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.

Monday

DAMMIT! I seem to be coming down with a cold and a cough, I DO NOT NEED THIS CRAP RIGHT NOW! I know the reason, I didn't floss yesterday, it's the only explanation.

I did the trainer's goal again today (30mins with average HR of 144), except this time to spec in case there was some fitness reason not to go longer. There probably was and now I'm doomed, sigh, what is it with Mondays?

Sunday - The Ascension

I had a rough night last night and couldn't fall asleep until around 2AM so I didn't get to the gym until around 8:15AM. Must have been the hockey game a buddy took me to last night or the sense of victory I felt at achieving my trainer's goal yesterday.

Today I decided to do a lighter type workout without the pace of yesterday. I headed to the recombinant bike, plugged in forty minutes and start doing my time. There are already two girls (I'm on delicate ground, perhaps I should call them ladies, because I'm certain they are - sigh - look they are fun and perky so girls it is) in there, one on a treadmill and the other on a stairmaster. Both are at the end of their workout and the girl on the stairmaster is yakking to her pal sweating away in that yummy way women do because of that additional X chromosome. She's really working but can hold a conversation. I'm just putting in time and kind of wondering about the stairmaster, which everyone and their brother reports is a real mother...! (you seem to develop a mild case of Tourette's the longer you hang out in the gym).

So I'm quizzing her about it and she's telling me that when she first started on it she could only do about two minutes and said if I'm going to try it I shouldn't be surprised if I only go that long, "One to three minutes." Now this girl has been doing this exercise crap for years and I'm paying attention, she's a godsend filled with information. I'm bored on the bike, just hammering along, getting through it. She's telling me she fights that by going ten minutes on three different machines to combat boredom. I'm not ready to be a triathlete yet figuring I'd have a total cool down before figuring out how to get my heart rate up on the next device from 'ze camps.'

I ask her how she feels about the stairmaster?

"Oh, I hate it! I don't know how these things calculate calories but when I'm on this I just sweat much more than when I'm on the other machines but they say I burn about the same number of calories. I don't know what to believe on the calorie counters."

Now I'm fairly intrigued. This machine is working this girl the way the elliptical initially worked me. I'm all about the heart rate right now, until the lifting starts and if I can get my heart rate up faster then I won't have to go as long getting the rate up. Hmmm.

She finishes up and heads out with her pal. I pedal along, here's the chart for that one:

You can tell I was doing intervals by the sawtooth look of the graph. I do the cool down and then start circling the stairmaster. I decide, "What the heck" and climb up on the thing. They look like this and the exercise is a lot like going up a down escalator.

If Spotted RUN Screaming From the Room

You have to walk on the steps to even program the thing or you'll slide to the bottom and fall off. Probably some rite of passage. I pick 'Manual Level 1' and then it's the usual questions, enter age, weight, cup size, blah blah blah and then, "Enter minutes 1-99"

I enter "2"

The machine says, "5"

I enter "2"

The machine says, "5"

FINE!

The stairs start moving and I start going up it at this really anemic pace. I up the level to two and the stairs move faster, the machine is also babbling about 'Floor Level One' or some nonsense and I'm offended about "floor" anything and up the level to three, then four, then five, and then OH MY GOD!

I'm seriously working here I'm about a minute in and already somewhere in zone four and I'm sweating in the most unattractive manner. Its just pouring out of me and I can feel my heart rate climbing, just like me, one step at a time. Suddenly I lose three minutes of my life, I can tell you nothing of what happened in that time span. Nothing.

I snap out of it around minute four. I'm definitely anaerobic, my water bottle is empty and the Garmin is saying I'm in zone 5.2 or something and I'm gasping for air and glancing around like a trapped animal. There is no way I'm not doing that last minute! I trudge on not even thinking to lower the level, there is no thought at all, just finishing this thing. My heart is hammering and unexpectedly, I'm done. Five minutes, my ass totally handed to me.

The machine starts a five minute cool down routine. SCREW THAT. I get off that nightmare and stagger around the gym in a weird anaerobic daze. Here's the chart of that little preview of hell:

I go in the sauna and sit for fifteen minutes or so before noticing that I forgot my towel. Ewwwwww! I grab the towel and get some paper towels, soap them up and clean off the bench. Then I shower, and then I weigh.

231 pounds.

I've lost six pounds in the two weeks of starting this idiocy. Now I'm not going to get into some debate about water loss and I know these are the 'easy' pounds glares at stairmaster so lets just say I believe I'm losing weight and leave it at that :-)

Saturday - The Goal 144 bpm for Thirty Minutes...

Well it's lunchtime on Friday and I'm writing this for tomorrow's entry. I'm trying to atone for Friday's breakfast by eating a salad for lunch - GROAN - I mean dear sweet Lord I'm kinda liking it, and considering changing my name from Gummy Bear to Rabbit Boy. My trainer walked by giving me the fingers to eyes and pointing at me thing - "I'm watching YOU to see if you're misbehaving at lunch!" I'm glad she didn't bear witness to the sheer depravity that occurred at breakfast, I fess up to her, I don't know why, probably lying to one's trainer is a cardinal sin. I then ask about tomorrow's workout and say, "Heart rate of 144 for thirty minutes right?" Kind of hoping, no, fervently hoping she'll respond with, "Did I say 144? I meant 124!"

Instead she stares me dead in the eyes and says, "Yep."

Yesterday (Friday, I'm beginning to feel like this post is going to read like an episode of The Time Tunnel), a coworker (remember my shyness at naming names in this blog, but THANKS coworker, you know who you are) sent me a bunch of stuff that was based on years of her doing exercise. One was a document on fat burning that I'm going to have to read a few times. Another was a VO2 measuring formula, I'm gonna hold off of that one for a bit since my number (currently) is abysmal - I might wait until the three month mark when the trainer checks up on me again. And last was a spreadsheet called 'The Sally Edwards Method for Heart Rate.' I don't have a clue who Sally Edwards is - GASP!, but I plug in some numbers and it informs me my 'base' which I'm interpreting as my Max Heart Rate is 174 (a moment for quiet gloating) but then goes on to inform me that my 'Strength Energy Zone (75-85%) is 131-148 which is where my trainer wants me (allows for my wondrous trainer to gloat, go on, you know you want to) and that my 'Interval Energy Zone (65-92%) is 113-164. She wants me in the 144-154 range for most of my workouts (or 83-89% of Max Heart Rate, I've reset my Garmin with these Edwards numbers). At one time I told my trainer that I didn't go to college to learn all this stuff but she did, so I'm gonna listen to her and try for that range, God help me. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'll trust her numbers but use mine :-) In other words using her Max HR calculation of 203 (based off of The American College of Sports Medicine) puts me in 70-76% of Max Heart Rate. Why is this so complicated?

I brave the weather and get into the gym and make sure I know exactly where the trash can is, there's a high probability puking will be involved! I feign indifference at this latest hurdle but I'm pretty nervous. I've got my trusty USPS water bottle with me. I'm lugging THAT thing around everywhere, like the binky its become.

I'm alone, it's around 6:30am and this is the first time I'm all by my lonesome. It's weird. I dawdle, hanging out in front of the touch screen for the really cool HDTVs and Sirius radio station they have installed. There's a note there saying something I don't bother to read, probably something down the lines of don't TOUCH the touchscreen!

I tentatively touch the blank screen. It lights up! It's remarkably easy to use. I push the button for the radio and soon it's blasting out some techno-funk. This station was on yesterday and it feels a lot like I imagine a Rave party would be without the ecstasy and a lot of people miserably exercising. It's way too loud. I turn it off. You can turn on individual HDTVs. I've decided to try the elliptical for this ordeal so I turn on that TV for those machines and set it for FoxNews in glorious high definition. I turn on the other TV next to it and it comes up as FitTV, cool.

Lap one (on the metrics above) was an attempt to use the elliptical machine for a heart rate, thinking it would help me get in the zone I needed to be at but it didn't work out. It set a target heart rate of 118bpm and I can hear my trainer laughing if I was to turn in that, or worse staring at me sympathetically and saying, "Try harder." (shudder)

I also had a problem with the Garmin. You can set an alarm if you're either above or below a zone and I had set it to warn me if I went below 144bpms. When I turn on the Garmin it starts beeping.

You are below your target heart rate.

I know, I'm trying to get up to it!

BEEP - You are below your target heart rate.

DAMMIT!

I turn that warning off and set the elliptical for 'Manual' and the level for 8 and the time for 45 minutes and start to work. When I get into zone 3.8 - 4.0 I hit the target heart rate. I note the time and when I can quit after hitting my thirty minutes. Two minutes later I've forgotten it.

I don't know when to quit. Screw it I'll try and go the distance, time wise. I'm also keeping a close eye on my 'Avg Heart Rate' since that's the objective. The Garmin only gives the average for the entire workout and I want to point to that number for the trainer.

Here's the chart for lap two:

Average of 146 bpm for 45 minutes. I was in the target heart range for forty minutes, ten minutes more than requested. Mmhmm, I rock. Also when I'm in this range I'm 'puffy' and really couldn't hold a conversation, also sweaty and gross - this 'puffy' business is for my trainer.

The cool down was a mess. I was worried about my average bpms so I kept it at 144 so that it wouldn't go down - I now know I don't need to do that for laps. So 45 minutes in the target range! 560 calories burned according to the machine.

I stretch with more focus than yesterday and then do a few curls with a dumb bell as a heads up to my muscles (this is coming, be afraid muscles).

As I leave I notice I'm all alone again (a few people came in during the ordeal), I turn off the TVs and head home. Tomorrow I think I'll do a fairly light interval training or something. I suspect I'm gonna feel this.

Apologies for the length of this post.

Friday

Well I've called down the wrath :-) My trainer sent me an email yesterday, "Here is a stretch routine that you can add to your current cardio workouts. Please complete this routine at the end of workouts (at least 2 times per week) to decrease muscle soreness and increase your flexibility around your major joints." I guess she's gonna eliminate the Inflexible from The Supreme Inflexible Gummy Bear of my title, cuz flexible I ain't!

Well I was feeling pretty good about my workout today but if I was following my trainer correctly, she wants more! We walked around a bit and she showed me how to push my resting level up on the intervals for more fun, but according to that fancy machine I burned 400 calories.


There's still some confusion, mostly by me (WHY must I always be the confused one??!!) on this whole Max Heart Rate and 'zones' and what not. My goals are simple:

1. Lose Weight
   
2. Tone & Strengthen Muscles

I know I'll need #2 above once we discover what lies beneath all this flab.

So my trainer wants me hanging out around 144-154 bpm then FINE! (glares at trainer).

I kinda sorta tried the stretching thing after my marathon on the elliptical, remember when I first started and I couldn't do five minutes on the thing? No? Me either, that was in the ago.

Naturally I forgot my towel and was told of the 'paper towels and blow drier' technique but I recalled my trainer (I refuse to assign names since this is a public blog on the internet - so I don't mean for it to sound as frosty as it reads) saying they have spares. I managed to get a yummy brown one! After using it I put it in the washing machine like at good boy, as I've said, it's a nice facility!

So I race back here, notice its time for free doughnuts, race downstairs, and have a psychotic break. I get past the grill and get my coffee but then on the way back the aroma does me in. I ordered what I passed on earlier in the week. Plugged it into my calorie counter thingy and had a 1,059 calorie meal! Sigh. Stop looking at me like that, I'm only human! I can still have 1,698 calories today but it looks like a light lunch. I grabbed a doughnut for my wife on the way back up.

On my way to the shower, um let me rephrase that, after my workout while still fully clothed, I pop my head in the trainer's office and ask her what I should do tomorrow? She wants me to do a cardiogobblety-gook workout telling me that I can hop for ten minutes onto different machines if I want to, kinda implying I should. I'm not sure why since she wont get to see me face plant on the treadmill like I almost did when I thought I could show off and do my 'model runway walk' during my assessment last week. Good times, good times.

She says, "Go for thirty consecutive minutes with an average heart rate of 144 beats per minute and... bring me a shrubbery!"

I'm having fun :-) thank you wife for kicking me down this path.

Thursday

I am now kinda dieting. Dear Lord what is happening to me??? I guess it's more accurate to say I'm monitoring my food intake. I'm using this app on the iPhone called Lose It. You tell it a bunch of junk like I want to lose thirty pounds and it kicks out something like you can attain that weight by 2 Aug 09. Deal? and then you get so many calories to eat a day. It's kinda fun to put that stuff in.

Today I went for the more traditional exercise bike for around thirty minutes, followed by seven on the treadmill. Lap 2 and lap 4 (above) are cool down laps. Here's the overall heart chart.

I'm pretty pleased with it.

After the sauna and shower I ran into the trainer I've been trying to get a hold of. She said she's been sick for the last few days, and there are a few people ahead of me on the exercise routine. I think I might have irritated her when I kicked back a "So?" when she informed me she had been sick the last few days, so she suggested 45 minute of intervals on the elliptical machine.

It's obvious she's trying to kill me to get out of this designing a routine for me!

Well tomorrow is my first attempt at intervals.

YAY oh YAAAYYYYYY!