Moment of truth

Well I woke up this morning and stepped on the scale...

165...

Yea not going to lie that's a bit embarrassing.

So lesson #1 for the Maintenance road...still weight yourself every week. When you've had a busy season...or holiday season and a couple extra pounds creep back on you scale back your food intake and attack those extra pounds in the gym. Hard lesson to learn but hey better at 165...

This morning I had my usual cup of coffee. Right now I'm really into pecan coffee with a splash of vanilla creamer. I also had a blueberry bagel thin, blueberry yogurt, and an apple. Nothing to exciting but defiantly did the trick.

Ok so last Friday I figured out my Heart Rate zones for the Elliptical Crosstrainer and the StairMaster. Originally I was just going to do the talk test on the Crosstrainer buuuuut that proved to be a challenge. The point of the talk to test is to increase your speed in intervals until you can't say the Pledge of Allegiance then note your HR. When you do this with running it's pretty easy to do...just hit speed button. However, on the Crosstrainer there is no speed button...your legs are the speed button.  My goal was to increase my strides per minute but it was hard to maintain whatever stride I was at. Second, I was up to like 175 strides per minute and was no where near being out of breath...my legs however felt like they were about to fall off. I ended up stopping the test at 175 strides. Not to sure the Crosstrainer will be my main mode of making gains in my VO2max.

Since on the StairMaster you can increase your speed via steps per minute I decided to add that in. I waited 20 minutes to let my HR recover and then attacked the beast. It took awhile but eventually I found my breaking point and got off huffing and a puffing. When you find your HR you then take percentages of your HR to find your zones.

So now what do I do with that information? Well according to Be a Better Runner I want mainly work in zones 3 & 4, very little in zone 5a. Then when I am doing interval training via the StairMaster I want to be in zones 5b and 5c to make gains in my VO2max. I'm thinking one day of cross training isn't enough so I need to maybe revise my plan for cardio. I'll give it some thought and let yall know what I come up with.

Till then,
Belle