three things thursday
1. My “not showering” confession seems to have kicked off a “who is more disgusting” contest throughout the blogworld, twitter, etc. I’m glad to know that there are lots of stinky people like me out there, but, come on now. You’ll never be as gross as I am. I’m a Wednesday-Sunday showerer. As in, I shower Wednesday because that’s the day I go downtown, and then I shower Sunday because I usually can’t remember the last time I showered by then.
See? Showered yesterday!
2. The temps went up yesterday, so I took full advantage of it and went outside for a ride. I got out early enough before the sun went down that I hoped to be able to get 30-40 miles in, but I did not account for the 2347mph winds that attacked southern DC/northern VA yesterday afternoon. I’m not sure I’ve ever ridden in wind that bad. There were quite a few very deep washouts on the MV trail that I had to coast through, and both little bridges near the airport were still covered in snow, to the point where I had to walk my bike over one of them. I’m not afraid to wipe out, but I’m also trying not to be stupid. I rode over the 14th Street bridge and up Ohio Drive to do a monument loop, and I’m pretty sure that there were times on Ohio Drive where I was being passed by snow melting. It was nice to go and visit all my old boyfriends.
I only did one loop of the mall and then headed out to Haines Point because traffic was annoying me, and holy hell. I was really excited on the “out” part of the HP loop because I was hitting 28-30mph speeds with almost no effort at all, and my HR was in the 120s. However, that all changed once I rounded the corner and turned down the other side, watching my HR shoot up to the 160s and my speed slow down to 12.5mph. My rage in this moment was akin to my Reston Century, mile 83 emotion.
I headed home after that instead of doing the tempo I had sorta kinda thought about doing, and after being slammed into the concrete wall on the 14th Street bridge, I decided to save my elbow from further damage and just walk my bike the rest of the way across, ignoring the voices in my head going, “LAME LAME LAME YOU ARE SO LAME TO MEEEEE.”
Also, to the bus driver that pulled up next to me while I was waiting to cross by the WWII Memorial and doused me in melted snow/black grimy water from head to foot, I desperately hope that someone put an ice cube in your pajamas last night.
All of this? Still better than being on a trainer in my basement. Plus I get washed off by this cutie cuterpants when I get home.
3. I tracked my heart rate yesterday during my legs-lifting session. I don’t train based on heart rate, but I do like to be aware of it while I am working out to make sure that my easy days stay easy and my tough days are getting up there, that my tempo is in the right place, etc. I’ve never tracked it while lifting before, though, and it was really interesting to watch it during the workout (planks, around 45 minutes, are tough).
Also, my Garmin has been doing something weird lately where, a few minutes into a workout, it will be showing that my heart rate is in the 190-220 range for about 5 minutes and then suddenly go back down to where it actually is. So just ignore that huge spike. I averaged 117 for the session, which I rounded down to 113 to account for the random wrong leap at the beginning. I'm fascinated by numbers and data and little graphs with lines, and also, I love colors.
Happy Thursday! Do you train by heart rate? Tell me more, I'm interested.