Today was a great day for surprising success! I slept in late and was 1 hour late to the gym. You would think with a start like this the day ain’t going your way. I stepped onto the scale and there was no weight lost. Not a shocker after the amazing drop the day before, but I was not building any steam towards awesomeness today. I got on the treadmill and decided I would do a mile, walk the balance of the 30 minutes then do 20 minutes on the elliptical since I needed to be somewhere around lunch time. I jogged my mile and needed to have the speed at 4.7 mph instead of the 4.6 I normally do. Hey no complaints, but I was concerned I would tire before the 1 mile mark. SHOCKER! I felt good at 1 mile and kept going. I did 2 miles in under 26 minutes. That was incredible. It has been years since I jogged 2 miles constant. I walked the remaining minutes at 3.3 mph until I reached 30 minutes. I then did use the elliptical trainer for 20 minutes and kept the sweat going strong. I checked my heart rate twice today. Once right after jogging and it was 151 bpm. That is what I remember to be right when I used to really run regularly at multiple mile distances. I was glad to see it was not at 157 or higher. Why? because that would be an extreme effort on my part and I am not trying to burn out or exhaust myself so I don’t feel like doing anything for the rest of the day. The other time I checked my heart rate was while I was cruising along on the elliptical trainer. I was in a range of 133-137 depending on if I was trying to go fast for a minute or cruise along at a comfortable pace. In times past I have checked my heart rate on the elliptical machines at work and have found if I start exercising there my heart rate is 119-130 bpm unless I am doing a maximum effort that I can barely do for 1 minute at a time then I can hit 140-143 bpm. I have learned that for me the elliptical machines need to be second string for cardio workouts. The stair stepper machines are a very close second to the treadmill for heart rate and sweating, but I don’t feel the total body effort I feel when I am jogging. For cardio, for me, the treadmill is the gold medal winner of exercising.
I guess I rambled enough about that stuff. The rest of the day was some resting, eating out with the wife and her brother, and moving some more furniture and stuff from one place to another. What I did was not a workout but it was an activity and it did burn a few extra calories. Tomorrow holds a lot of promise. The Cherry Blossoms are in bloom in DC and I expect me and the spouse will be doing some urban hiking to see what there is to see. The fun part is that the weather forecast originally had snow in the mix as a possibility. It really is something to have 60 degree days and to have temperatures drops. It is a whole different experience to see snow being called for. Oh well I expect we will be out here unless it rains hard. Snow don’t stop our fun! Time to call it a night and get some rest, my wife is going to walk the hell out of me tomorrow!
One thing I did forget to mention, My calories for the day were 2449 calories. Higher than I want, but I allow myself 1 meal on the weekend to be outside my normal nutritional plan. Tomorrow might be a subway kind of meal for eating out but it will be better than the Mexican place I ate at today with Steak Fajitas.
