Saturday, January 31, 2009

Finished January with a Strong Start

I ended up getting a ride to the campus from the hotel on the shuttle since I didn't get up in time to walk. I did walk back to the hotel and it was wonderful. It was sunny, about 70° or so with a gentle breeze. Unfortunately, there was quite a bit of traffic and many of the streets were unfriendly to walking. I.e. no sidewalks. No hills either. All this flat would get boring to me. Anyway, I finished the day with a 3 mile run on the hotel treadmill. Today, I ran about 10% faster than yesterday since I wasn't constrained by a treadmill program. Is it a bad idea to run at 90% Just for comparison, I also wore the pedometer. 5.98 miles on the Nike+ and 10.73 miles on the pedometer. The Nike+ gadget was only used for the walk back and the run on the treadmill. So I did walk almost 5 miles just wandering around, going to dinner, etc. Kind of what I had figured from before. I finished the month with 143.26 miles on the Nike+ and that is well over the 80 miles per month goal that I had set for myself. I guess I should have set a higher goal. Since I am here for the rest of the week as well as February being a short month, it may still be a reasonable goal.

While running today, I watched my heart rate and it stayed between 147 and 160 bpm. This corresponds to 80% and 90% of maximum for me based on the zone formula from this site which is apparantly anaerobic. Most of the web sites I read suggest that I need to exercise at a much lower level to get aerobic benefit and maximize fat burning. When I do that, I don't feel that I get much exercise. I wonder if I'm hurting myself by running faster...

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