Today's Workouts: Giving Myself a Slight Break

After spending most of yesterday traveling home from Minneapolis, I found myself to be quite tired. I slept 10 big ones, knowing that today I had to do another customer presentation; but at least this one was remote over the PC/phone.

7:15AM Abs/core 31'. These workouts are starting to feel easy again, which means I guess it's time to change things up. But I will wait until after the Goofy Challenge, as I'm starting a taper officially next week, and it is time to give my body the rest it so deserves.

12:41PM Bike 1:30. I was supposed to do the same workout as Tuesday. I knew I'd be doing this on a gym bike (a Life Fitness bike, to be specific), and didn't know how that would go until I started out. I knew I wouldn't have time to complete the workout before I went to the office, so I reconciled myself to using the substandard equipment.

I did a 10' and (2) 12' FT intervals, and even though I don't believe the watts readout on these bikes (it said 150 for each, and it doesn't vary depending on your cadence, so that right there makes it inaccurate), my HR was where I would expect it to be.

After I finished 1 hour, I had just had it with this bike. I am not in an optimal position on it, I'm not attached to the pedals, and it's not geared anywhere near any actual bike. So I made a spot decision to spend the last 30' of the workout doing something different that I knew would be a little fun for a change. I put the thing on hill workout and really cranked up the resistance so that when I was "not on a hill," I was still putting out a decent effort. Mentally, this made the time pass faster, and as I was in a HOT gym with no fan blowing on me, my God, you should have seen the sweat pouring off of me! I could feel it coming out of every single pore on my body, including my eyes! Since the hill workout was 1' hill, 1' easy, it was easy enough for me to manage the 30' bout mentally, and at one point the watts readout was like 276, something I should not see, but I was barely turning the pedals.

All in all, I was only about 60 calories off (less) from what I burned during the Tuesday workout, so I considered this a successful workout, even though I didn't do exactly what I was supposed to do. No worries, I was still working harder on this particular bike than I ever have, and I could tell how much stronger I've become. My workout clothes were literally soaked (and yes, smelly) when I finished--it was if I had been swimming in them. Disgusting! One guy who showed up while I was on the bike commented that I was working up "a little sweat." Uh-huh.

So you see, I do occasionally deviate from the planned workout, and today was one of those days where the combination of the heat of the gym, lack of fan and crappy bike conspired to convince me to ease up just a little bit. All for the better, though, I'm sure! I feel FANTASTIC right now, not at all tired--oops, I guess a 1.5 hour massage helped out with that, too--but now I'm looking forward to my morning swim tomorrow and an easy 1 hour run. Since I only did one workout yesterday I feel like I haven't done much at all, and I think I will hit the big weekend workouts in great shape.