veginator

8 miles in a little over 1:16! Go lobster! You'll definitely be able to improve on that duathlon time you had a few weeks ago.

Weight this morning: 161.8. I wasn't feeling famished when I woke up, so maybe I've actually lost a teeny bit of weight from a week ago when the scale said the same thing? Right hamstring was a little sore today and legs in general just weren't very fresh. I ran an extremely slow 5 miles, 59:54 with an average HR of 122 and max of 136.

25 minutes on the elliptical machine; 8 minutes warmup and the rest intervals, about 1 1/2-2 minutes followed by a couple minutes cooldown. Did 4 intervals, with the last one reaching a peak HR of 167. Average was about 130; not sure because I forgot to shut my watch off for 3 minutes. Did a little bit of rowing before this just to do something for upper body endurance, but I couldn't get my HR above 110-115 or so and my average was down around 105, so I quit after about 12 minutes. Ran short on time so I didn't get to lift much, just did a couple of sets of flat bench presses. 4 x 115, back started cramping on the 4th rep so I stopped. Then did 6 reps of 105. My new Garmin GPS/HR Monitor just arrived. Can't wait to try it out! Ran 4.39 miles in 42:10, average HR 142, max HR 157, pace 9:37/mile. It's great to have all this data (and more). One thing I don't like: the heart rate readout is WAY TOO SMALL! I can't even read it during a run unless I stop and squint, unless of course I brought my glasses along for the run. Poor display design! Later, after actually reading the relevant part of the manual: Well, I figured out that you can customize the display, including how many and what pieces of information are displayed. Never mind; I love this thing! Woo hoo for new toys.

Ran 5.2 miles in 53:37. The first and last miles were warmup and cooldown miles at a slow pace, while the middle 3.2 were a tempo run at a pretty good pace, trying to get ready for this weekend's 5k. Did it in 28:19 with average HR somewhere around 150. Did a little kick the last half mile or so of it where I got my HR up to 174. Tonight I ran another 3.6 miles in 45 minutes and some-odd seconds (too lazy to go get the watch right now), average HR 120. Just wanted to get in a second workout today to help the weight loss along. Still slightly sore from my workout Sunday, so just did a couple of sets of shoulder presses and a set of flat bench presses. More tomorrow, perhaps.

No exercise Saturday due to being busy traveling to my son's soccer tournament in Ohio. Sunday: Did about half an hour of upper body work at the "gym" in our hotel. Still sore from Friday's long run. Today: Still a teeny bit sore. Played basketball for about an hour with my son, then later I ran 3.6 miles at a very leisurely pace. Time: 46:53, HR: 118.

There's a pretty cheap way to do it: 1) run your ass off up a big hill until you're totally out of breath; 2) keep on running until you nearly pass out; 3) look at your HR monitor.

There's a lot of genetic as well as age-related variation in heart rate & it doesn't really mean much. Generally older people have slower maximum heart rates, though not by nearly as much as the standard and highly inaccurate 220-age formula for maximum heart rate predicts, and even people the same age in the same condition can have pretty different maximum heart rates. So for all we know 160 could be the same percentage of your maximum heart rate as 135 is for me. My max is about 180.

Weight this morning: 162. I went to the sports medicine doc yesterday for some interesting new treatment for my foot that he's recently received training in. Involved a lot of unusual stretching & massage, as well as me wearing this weird athletic tape that goes all the way up my calf that's supposed to stretch out the tarsal tunnel. He recommended that I up the running mileage a bit to see how my foot coped with it, and I followed his recommendation! It's been a couple of weeks since my last long run, so I decided to see if I could go half-marathon distance today. I ran 13.2 miles (plus walking a few hundred feet to the water fountain a few times) in 2:48. Heart rate monitor was being a little weird because I didn't have the chest strap on tight enough so I don't have a very accurate HR, but I think it was somewhere in the 130s.

Weight this morning: 161.8. Not sure why it was so low, as I actually felt a little bloated. I'm guessing it will be higher tomorrow. No exercise today, due to a heavy workload and constant thunderstorms during the time when I'd planned on it.

Ran 6 miles, 1:14, average HR 123. Did 8 and 7 reps of 105 on bench press, and a few other upper body exercises, a couple of sets each. (This workout was on Wednesday.)

Weight this morning was 163.6. Did 35 minutes on the elliptical machine at the gym, 20 of it intervals. Did 5 intervals, with 4 of them hitting above 160 on HR and one of them in the 150s. Average HR was 131. Did squats and other leg exercises. Did 8 reps of 160, 2 sets, on the squats.

One of the places I teach, American Public University, is an online school. The faculty seem pretty good from what I know.

Weight this morning, although on a particularly empty stomach since I ate dinner pretty early last night, was 164.0. Yesterday I got lots of exercise. Played three games of 1 on 1 basketball (two to 30, one to 20) with my son, which I assume took over an hour though I didn't check the time. Then I went for a run, intending to do a pretty hard tempo run of 4 miles or so with a mile warmup and cooldown tacked on before and after. It wound up being so hot that I couldn't really do quite what I'd planned. I jogged the first mile over to the park in 12 minutes, then did 4 miles of 10-minute miles, then just walked home because I was so hot. Total time for the 5 miles I ran was 52:34, with average HR of 148. Shortly thereafter, I did 21.65 miles on the bike in 1:44, average HR about 113 (I forgot to shut the monitor off right away when I got home, so I'm just guessing about HR).

Weight this morning: 165.2. Ran a 5k race this morning, and managed to reach my goal time of under 25 minutes--24:54.6, to be exact. My heart rate monitor went haywire (again) for the first few minutes of the race, so I wasn't able to time it personally or get an average HR for the whole race, but the part I did get I had an average HR of 162. Foot doesn't feel significantly worse, so that's good. As I had predicted, my son beat me by a little over a minute. He's in the middle of his soccer season, so he's definitely in a little better shape than I am. Being 14 and thus having almost no body fat helps, too! My hamstrings were still a little sore this morning from my intervals Thursday. It should be interesting to see what my legs feel like tomorrow!

Yesterday I did intervals. Jogged 1 mile over to the park, then did 2.4 miles of alternating sprints and walking, then walked home. The intervals were pretty short since I was running pretty hard each time, reaching a max HR of about 160 or more each time, with the highest being 167. I did about a dozen of them, with enough walking in between to get my HR down to anywhere from 120 to 150, depending on what I felt like. Average HR for the intervals was 149 and time was 23:24. No exercise today because I'm a little sore. I'm hoping that goes away tonight, because I'm doing a 5k tomorrow morning!

Anybody know of any decent vegan cycling gloves?

Social psych. Back when I didn't have two teaching jobs and had time to do research, it was generally on the topic of the relationship of emotions to judgment/decision-making/problem-solving (e.g., Hirt, Melton, McDonald, & Harackiewicz in JPSP in '96--I'm the second author). What's your dissertation about?

Bike computer probably needs new battery; wasn't able to record distance or average speed today. I rode for 1:40, average HR 124 and max of about 150.

Yeah, I always try to weigh myself at the same time under the same conditions, etc., but sometimes it's hard to know whether there's subtle bloating, an unusually late night snack, or whatever affecting things. I'm not noticing much difference with the cortisone shot, unfortunately, although I've read that sometimes it takes a while and sometimes it takes more than one shot--if it works, that is. I'm going to look into a different form of active release therapy than what I had before, because someone in the Runner's World forums said it had worked for them for this type of injury. Today's workout: Quick run, about 2.9 miles in 25:49, average HR 140, max 160. My sense from this is that although it won't be easy, I should be able to reach my goal of getting under 25 minutes in this weekend's 5k. It was also good to learn that running 5k at a relatively fast pace doesn't seem to do anything horrible to my foot, so I'm feeling okay about running the race this weekend.

Weight this morning: 165.4. Maybe I had some extra water weight yesterday morning? Yesterday it rained all day, so no bike ride. Went to the gym and lifted for a while, practiced racquetball about half an hour (I think I'm going to have to take tennis back up since nobody seems to be playing racquetball lately), and did some intervals on the elliptical trainer. Did five intervals where I got my heart rate above 160, which took about a minute and a half each, with about 2 minute recoveries in between and a couple of minutes warmup and cooldown. Highest HR was 166, average was 130, and total time was 20 minutes.

Weight this morning: 166.4. Stuck! Same weight as over a week ago despite 10 miles of running and 130 or so of cycling in the interim. Very frustrating.

27 miles in 1:56, average HR 109. This was in Evansville, which is much flatter than Bloomington. I'd have ridden faster, but the outsides of my feet were hurting a lot from pushing against my cycling shoes. I need to remember to wear thicker socks, or maybe put something cushiony in that part of the shoe.

Today I went to the podiatrist and got a cortisone shot in my foot. It hurt like hell, so it had better do some good! The podiatrist said running or whatever form of exercise was fine, "as tolerated." Maybe I took him a little too literally, because I decided to run 10 miles to test out how my foot was doing! It definitely hurts some, but I think it will be fine for doing some more running (though not that far!) in a couple of days. So between what the doctor said and my own experience, I've concluded that 1) a few miles of running here and there, maybe 15 a week (?), won't hurt my foot but 2) my plan to get in really good shape is going to need to rely mainly on biking. Did the 10 miles in 2:04, average HR 128.

Rode 45 miles in 3:31, average HR 114.

Busy with end of the semester grading Monday and Tuesday. Today I rode 30.99 miles in 2:16, average HR 127. About halfway through the ride, I did a big hill three times, reaching a peak HR of 165 each time. Despite laying off of running for over a week and a half now, my foot still isn't really any better. The pain kind of comes and goes. It's so random that it's hard to tell which if any of the various things I do from time to time (ibuprofen, ice, massage, stretching, and of course resting it a lot lately) does any good. If anything were doing a lot of good, my foot would be better by now. Frustrating! Back to the podiatrist Friday to see what the next step (ha ha) is.