Don't go to the Gym durring peak time.

March 5th (Week 3 Day 3) Ironman Triathlon Training

So last night I attempted to go to the gym directly after work with my fiance to get a good run in. When we got there non of the cardio equipment was available and the YMCA I go to has quite a large number of cardio machines, finally after 15 minutes of waiting a elliptical trainer opened up (not what I wanted but it would have to do because its 30 degrees out and 6 inches of snow on the ground) I would have rather gotten a treadmill but it will have to do. The plan was to do a quick 30 minute cardio workout (for those of you that don't know a cardio workout is when your heart rate is in the aerobic zone between 70-80% of your max heart rate for me that's approx 163-172 beats per minute) now working on the elliptical I found out is quite different then running on a treadmill.

For one, according to the speed indicator on the elliptical I was able to run at a constant 9-10 mph for the entire 30 minutes without ever raising my heart rate above 135 (which would be considered a fat burning workout) now on a tread mill running at a constant 9-10 mph would raise my heart rate to my targeted 165 beats per minute with in two minutes and at this point in my training would probably need to slow down with 7-10 minutes after that otherwise my heart rate would get too high and I would then be working in an anerobic threshold of my heart rate which isn't want I want.

The second and even bigger difference is that your stride length never changes no matter what speed you are going. This is vastly different from a treadmill or outdoor running, a 3 mph walk should not have the same feeling as a 10 mph run. Which brings me to my point about why I just didn't go faster to raise my heart rate to the correct cardio zone, it was impossible for me to make the elliptical go as fast as would need be to raise my heart rate up because I was taking a stride length that on a normal treadmill would be, for me anyway, about a 6 mph pace so taking eight million extra strides to speed up to a higher speed for a better heart rate just wasn't working.

The annoying thing for me was that there was no one monitoring the cardio room, normally during peak time they ask that you limit your workout to 30 minutes to accommodate as many people as possible and are pretty strict about enforcing it. There were many kids in there that I don't even think were old enough to be in the cardio room (my ymca has a strict 16 & over policy for the cardio room) and worse yet half the time they were on the treadmills they were just standing on the rails talk to each other while the treadmill was still going. Now these kids definitely needed to be working out but working out and socializing are too different things.

**RANT OVER**

This morning was my last physical therapy session so obviously no workout and I should be able to get back to a good training regiment next week without interruption, and better yet on the way into work I found out its supposed to be 65 this weekend which means no more snow, outdoor riding, and better running.