Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Waddling around the block

In effort to have a little moderation and at the suggestion of my grade/high school best bud, Joel, I have added exercise back into Da Plan. Joel was an exercise whack job in grade school. When I was playing touch football, he was making 7 mile runs across town. Every year when we did the presidential fitness test, he was noted not only for usually finishing first but also not infrequently vomitting from oxygen debt. He has mellowed with age a bit, but he keeps getting in better shape. His current thing is Ironman triathalons. You can check out his blog here.

Anyway, I give you all that background to drive home his advice to me. I quote from his email earlier this week.

"Your running schedule was over the top"

This is the equivalent of General Patton saying, "That's too far for my men to march. Someone else will have to fight the Germans."

I had expected "ambitious" or "too high risk for injury", but I have never heard Joel describe any program as too much. Granted it was a program for me, not him. Still. Perhaps he really has mellowed.

Schedule 4 days of activity as the plan (30 minutes is sufficient, 60 optimal). If you only make 3 that's okay. However, you must get 10 sessions of activity in a 3 week period ... Don't plan both weekend days as activity days. It's three weekdays, and one weekend day. There are no "make-up" days.

He also suggests working out at lunchtime as this is a time period that is pretty easy to control.

So that's what I'm a tryin' to do. 4 exercise days a week of at least 30 minutes. Only one weekend day counts. As always, my actual running rate is modest, 150-160 beats/minute. (That's a recovery rate, Joel. I have an unusually high max pulse rate). After a few weeks, I might try a little faster, but not yet.

So far so good. As noted earlier , I did a one hour run Sunday, and have done a lunctime run on Mon and Wed of this week. One more run before Saturday, and I can claim victory for week one!

3 Comments:

Blogger Joel said...

For the record, it was a combination of oxygen debt and hotdog day that lead to my all too frequent purges, and Gath always made me clean it up. Insult to injury man...

"I'm not mellow, I'm just medicated."
(fyi: Max HR 181, Min HR 38)

5:29 PM  
Blogger Don Q. said...

With a resting pulse of 38, how can you be sure you're not dead! That's nearly 1 beat/ 2 seconds.

My max is 195ish. It was 198 the last time I measured it a few years back. Haven't taken a true resting pulse in a few months. I'm gonna guess mid-50's.

5:34 AM  
Blogger Joel said...

> how can you be sure you're not dead.

I often ask myself that very question.

8:13 AM  

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