Bubble Pop Electric

The gym is a boring place. Many tens of people expending energy and moving nowhere (at least not in the literal physical sense). Not to sound negative, I’d just rather be outside. Alas, there are advantages as well, and I tend to gain from the “compartmentalization” of spaces, as it seems to induce efficient workouts. There is also the psychological effect of traveling to the gym, a specific location with a specific purpose for me.

In response to (or perhaps in fear of) extreme gym boredom I tend to keep things interesting by doing technical workouts. Today I spent 32 minutes on the stationary spinner. It took 5 minutes to warmup to a LT effort, which for me on an indoor bike means between 170 and 175 bpm. Over the next 27 minutes I challenged myself with 3 60 second surges at higher resistance, simulating hills, resting at the original effort level for roughly 5 min between each surge. By the last surge my HR hit a max of 183. This was tough.

In lieu of a cooldown on the bike before running, which I’ve done in the past, I hopped right on the treadmill. Maybe I’m subconsciously thinking I’ll get into triathlon someday, but mostly I decided that I don’t need a mid-workout cooldown. Either way, I found myself trotting along in place at an 8 min/mile pace. HR check at mile 0 was 165. After 1 mile I picked it up to 7:30 – at this point I was up to 174 bpm. At mile two I continued at 7:30, 174 bpm. At 2.5 I picked it up to 7:00/mile. Mile 3, 176 bpm. Mile 3.5, back down to 8:00/mile. I slowed to a walk at mile 4, 175 bpm. After a minute or two of walking I began a stretch/core routine, listed in brackets below.

My HR during the run was exceptionally high for a medium effort. Running outside at that pace I’d have averaged 160-165. This doesn’t worry me. I prefaced the run with a hard cycling effort, so I was forced to recover while running. This is my main goal for these workouts. I imagine there’s some benefit in learning how to cope with fatigue on the run. I’ll continue workouts like these until I’m confident I can replace them with hard running efforts. Today my legs felt good. Barely noticeable pain in the left knee, and my left ankle doesn’t hurt while running anymore. Only when I twist it a certain way while stationary. I hardly ever (maybe once in three years) experience exercise induced indigestion, so either I ate some bad spinach or I had a strong workout.

My roommate lent me his ipod nano, but I didn't put any of my music on it. I played his collection on shuffle, but don't remember much of what I heard. Particularly noteworthy were Belle and Sebastian and Gwen Stefani. For the record, 4 miles in 30 min flat.

[2 x 30 pushups, 2 x 30 situps, 2 x 15 “donkey kicks,” 2 x 15 standing piriformis lifts, various stretches]