Twenty kilometers an hour

Thursday:

I had a really good session at the gym this morning. As usual I woke up today feeling like rubbish - if I went by the first hour of every day I'd assume I was close to death with some horrible illness - but also as usual felt much better after a while.

I read a great quote today: Hold onto your dreams - stay asleep!

Anyway, I got to the gym and jumped on the elliptical. I increased the time to 30 mins but kept the resistance at level 3. After 5 mins warming up I started high intensity intervals, increasing intensity to as hard as I could push for 30-60 seconds then back to a much slower recovery interval. Mostly I was going up to 14 km/h but once I got up to 20 km/h (12.4 mi/h) for about 10 seconds. I thought I was going to vomit after that one! I can't run anywhere near that fast (I think 11 km/h is my record on a treadmill) but the elliptical is different to running. And no impact, which is great for my shins. Recovery was at a rather slow 5 to 6 km/h. At the end of the 30 mins I had gone 3.24 km. It's quite a long way below my target, which is fine because I'm giving myself a few weeks to get there! I plan to gradually increase the number of high intensity intervals and also go a bit faster in my recovery intervals, while also increasing the resistance level.

I was pretty tired after that, but got on the rowing machine. I had thought of doing 30 mins there, too, so I could cut out the stationary bike entirely; but I just wasn't ready for 30 mins. 20 was enough! I tried to keep my pace up, but also amused myself my watching a PT training his client nearby. One thing he did was put a wide band around her waist and got her to pull him along while he held on to the ends and leaned back. It looked hard. He probably weighed a lot more than she did.

I finished up with 10 minutes, fairly easy, on the bike.

I really felt like I spent a lot of that hour pushing myself really hard, which is great.

I had an awesomely delicious lunch. I picked up some corn chips on the way home and made nachos with pulled pork left over from dinner. Cheese and jalapenos and lots of fresh salsa on top.

Apart from the corn chips, all real food. And so yummy!

I haven't had the ravenous hunger I experienced on Monday, it seems to have been a one-off confused physical reaction to me actually exercising hard. I'm also not getting any muscle soreness or stiffness. On Monday I had both, almost straight away, but that has all passed. It didn't take my body very long to at adapt somewhat.

The only negative I'm getting from the exercise is general fatigue for the rest of the day. I'm spending more time napping than writing. But hopefully that too will pass as my body acclimatises.

I have lots of options for exercise tomorrow, but what I am thinking I might do is walk around the lake. It's all manicured lawns around public buildings, hopefully no Capeweed (which the kids and I now call Deathweed), and I feel like I am missing out on Spring stuck inside like this. I need a bit of sunshine and fresh air!