New HR Max!

Is routine the key to weight loss?

I went on an impromptu trip to Medicine Hat, Canada, with a friend. We ate, gambled, drank, and partied from about noon to 3am and spent the night in my car. Sunday was a wonderful day full of puking, shivering, and short bouts of consciousness.

I was met back in the states by bills, homework, an disappointed girlfriend, broken blower motor (see Goal #2 posts) and life in general. Needless to say, this threw my short lived exercise routine WAY out of wack. I went that entire following week without exercising even once. Bills and an acute lack of money was enough, I felt, to keep my blood pressure high and heart racing.

The next week was more of the same - pretty much nothing. On tuesday night (10/30/07) I was feeling restless, and needed to get out of the house. I haven't felt restless from inactivity for a while - it was a good feeling to get out even though it near freezing.

I used my phone (with a built in accelerometer based pedometer - more on this later) to measure running distance as an experiment. I also wore my heart rate monitor for fun. The jog was from my apt. to Romney - where I have my Graduate Exercise Physiology class (this seemed like an appropriate target). My jog was short - ~2.3 miles (measured by my phone). Total - I was out being active for ~30 minutes.

I would say it was split 2/3 jogging and 1/3 walking. My intent was not to go out and push myself to the max, as poorly conditioned as I am right now a slow jog pace is basically where I tach. out running on the road. 3 things came from this jog:

1. I'm in worse condition than I thought...
2. My Left Knee absolutely HURT LIKE HELL.
3. My maximum heart rate is 207.

I had surgery on my knee last April - old injuries catching up and so on... I did some training and rehab on my own after that - a couple hikes, etc... Then, for no apparent reason, I went 3 months with no exercise at all... My return in October was great - no pain at all for 3 straight weeks! My jog last Tuesday shattered this. I will be more careful next time. I've been resting and icing since then. Tonight is my first night out and I am going to take it very easy.

My heart rate was 207 BPM. That's really damn high (not good or bad - just means I worked harder than I probably should have). I've updated my Excel Exercise Tracker (that's what I'm going to call it from now on) with this new value and changed my exercise intensities in my watch accordingly.