toddtyrtle's Fitness Profile

toddtyrtle's Journal

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  Whoops!

  A couple months away from the spin studio, a few weeks driving a car, and a month or so in the states eating American food out at restaurants and it looks as if I have a bit of ground to regain. Oh well. It's not as if I'm particularly surprised. :-)

  Posted 9 months ago by toddtyrtle

  
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  Woo! I'm not completely sedentary!

  OK, even when I wasn't logging here I was still riding my bike occasionally, though we moved downtown so my rides are all short - 5 km or less. Convenient for getting around, but not much for fitness. But now I'm on the road again for business. This time I didn't book a rental car but instead tossed the folding bike in the belly of a Greyhound and got off in Niagara Falls, ON, after which I biked 25 km to the hotel where I'm staying. Now I'm about 10 km from work so every day I get two 10 km rides (about 1/2 hour each) and it feels really great to be back at it. Of course I'm going on vacation in a bit and will be taking a little over a week off from this. But once I'm back hopefully I'll be back at the spinning for a bit.

  Posted 10 months ago by toddtyrtle

  
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  Short break

  Taking a short break from this while I'll be on the road from Tomorrow through Saturday without any ability to cook for myself (and know exactly what I'm eating) or to get to exercise classes. Starting in earnest when I return and no plans for the forseeable future for any travel (but you never know). Moving house on the 15th, and as part of this I'll be adding a new (temporary) facet to my workout starting September 1st. The new house is about 8 miles away from here and we have a bunch of boxes that need to be moved. I plan to toss a few in the trailer and haul them over 2-3 at a time. So we'll see how a 16 mile bike ride (half of it with 80-100 lbs of stuff) will be.

  Posted 12 months ago by toddtyrtle

  
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  Back again

  It's been a few days - down with a chest cold, but as of yesterday I'm back at it. Went to spin class in the morning (which was a mistake, I think. I do much better in the afternoon) and then took my bike across town to look at an house we might be renting so I got a bit of an extra ride in. Still not back to my old form - have a little of the cold left and I made the mistake of going to class too soon after morning coffee. Some say caffeine helps in small doses but not for me. Even a little coffee before an aerobic workout saps my energy and I find myself out of breath much sooner than I would have been normally. Thus my usual formula of coffee in the morning, class in the evening works far better.

  Posted 12 months ago by toddtyrtle

  
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  Great day yesterday but...

  Yesterday was a pretty great day as far as exercise goes. Rode to spin class which turned out to be possibly the hardest class I've done yet. On the positive side, I was able to add as much tension as the instructor asked and pretty much keep pace the whole time - and this guy is demanding. Making it further difficult was the fact that he seems to prefer extended remixes. So a 45 minute class had 4 songs. And one characteristic of these songs was that they had several "false endings". I would keep thinking I was almost to the end and would get a break but no, it went on for another 5 min. Made for an interesting class, and definitely pushed me farther than I would have because I seemed to always have hope that if I just kept it up for another minute I'd make it to the end. At the end of it I did the 8 km ride home in record time. Seems that between the classes and the new gear it is getting much faster and even keeping up with cars is possible (in the 40km/hr zones anyway). Exhilarating. My blackberry was unlocked in my bag (and thus subject to accidental keypresses) and betrayed its love for speed (and the fact it was sent to me from our Montreal office) by displaying "OUIIIIIIII" at the end of that quick ride. Got home and concluded an experiment. Before leaving I weighed myself and I guessed at how much I drank (one and a half 770 ml bottles of water) and then weighed myself again at home. The verdict? Apparently a workout like that results in my sweating about 1,800 ml. That's spinning for you! Today things aren't going so well. Sure, I started the day out a bit lighter - back down under 190 again. But sadly, this cold I am getting has moved from my head to my chest. It isn't bad today but it is bad enough that I don't want to do a heavy duty aerobic workout until my chest is clear. So I'm taking today off. With any luck I'll be better in a few days.

  Posted about 1 year ago by toddtyrtle