When In Home

One of the great benefits my employer gives its employees is the 980 schedule. This means that we are scheduled to work 9 hours, 4 days a week (Monday-Thursday), and 8 hours, every other Friday. It's such a great benefit. I really enjoy having 3-day weekends for half the year. It's a great aid not only for the ability to relax, but I am also able to get in longer work-outs that I normally wouldn't be able to fit into my schedule during the week. I am able to spread out my errands that I have to complete on the weekends over three days, and still have time on that Friday to do something for me. This past Friday was an especially productive one for me. I was able to catch up on LOST before the final season premiere on February 2nd (I had 3 episodes left to watch); organize piles of old mail and bills; clean my car (the inside); and get a long brick workout in.

My brick workout started on the bike, with a 5-minute warm-up in a low-gear set. The workout was suppose to simulate riding hills (as it was fairly cold out and didn't want to ride outside) so I rode up and down my small gear set, riding on a certain gear for 2 minutes before switching up or down to the next one. I started on the lowest gear, worked my way up to the highest gear on my smallest gear-set, and then back down again. Did this over and over again until my 45 minutes were up. Final vitals for the workout:

• Total time: 0:45:13
• Average heart rate: 167 bbm
• Maximum heart rate: 188 bbm
• Calories burned: 623 kcal

One of the best parts of having an indoor trainer, is that I can ride all day long indoors, while it's absolutely freezing outside. I love getting up sometimes in the morning before work, and riding for an hour and then heading to work. On a long workout (1:30+ hrs), I just pop in a movie, or check on the On Demand section and watch a movie while working out. Last time I watched Jurassic Park; such a good movie. I set up my bike on it's trainer right in front of the T.V. and just zone out. Or I could ride easy during a show or when the movie is on, but then when a commercial comes on, I crank up my cadence and push it as hard as I can until the show/movie comes back on. Here is what my set-up looks like:

After pumping my legs through a nice indoor hill workout, it was over to the gym for my other half of the brick workout. I could not run outside, because it was hardly 10°F and with the brutal wind, I did not feel like suffering that much on my day off. I went over the the gym that my apartment complex has for all of its tenants, and ran on the treadmill. I started the workout with a 5-minute warm-up again, because my muscles all tightened up from the walk over to the gym (although I ran) because it was so cold out. I then ran for an hour, trying to stay within heart rate zones 1 and 2 while amping up the speed on the treadmill to a near sprint for 20-30 seconds, 4-5 times.This was a relatively easy workout, being that zones 1 and 2 are considered the recovery and aerobic zones. I finished the work-out with the following vitals:

• Total time: 0:59:42
• Average heart rate: 169 bbm
• Maximum heart rate: 185 bbm
• Calories burned: 836 kcal
• Total calories burned (01/29/10): 1,459 kcal

At this point in my day, I felt really good. The last three episodes of LOST were phenomenal, the work-outs were exhilarating and left me feeling very good and motivated. I get back to my apartment, and all those feelings went away. I went to take a shower, and the water was freezing! So I had to deal with my sweat from the gym freezing on my way to my apartment, and then had to take a cold shower; brr! For the rest of the day, our building was out of hot water and heat in the building for some reason. Luckily, they fixed those problems before too long, and we got hot water/heat again before the night was over. 

I finished my night off, watching the 103rd running of the Milrose Games, and catching Bernard Lagat claim his 8th win in the Wanamaker Mile in a time of 3:56! Then watched the Winter X-Games and Shaun White in the super pipe prelims was crazy!

If I can finish this post off with a video I watched, posted on twitter by @TrekBikes as a motivator for anyone. It's a video on Levi Leipheimer, a professional cyclist who is one of my favorites:

Motivation