Be Still My Beating Heart
No, really...
ABout four times a week I jog three miles and then bike 14 kilometers. I have no idea what a kilometer is, but I alo have no idea how to set my stationary bike's distance measurements to miles. The whole process taken about 80 minutes and it's pretty much the only time I let myself watch television -- two birds with one stone and all that...
To keep me from keeling over, I've purchased a heart monitor (harkening back to the day almost a year ago when my doctor thought I might have had a heart attack -- which I hadn't). My "target" zone is, apparently, somewhere between 123 and 162 beats per minute. Anything more than 162 and the watch starts beeping something akin to "call 911" in morse code.
Now, I've been doing this routine since January. I'm not sure that I have seen a physical difference, but I have watched that heart rate number drop steadily. After just a 10 minute jog in January my heart would be a pounding 180, my heart monitor practically pushing me into the car for a trip to the ER. These days I only break 162 after 45 minutes if I am listening to angry music on my i-pod.
So, I was quite surprised when, during my warm-up, my heart rate spiked to 165 for no reason. Walk downstairs. Turn on the treadmill. Get on the treadmill going 3mph. 10 seconds later my heart is pumping like mad. What else is there to do? I figured this was "the big one" and that at least I would "go out" while watching the season finale of "The Shield". A few seconds later and my heart stopped beating -- well, at least according to the monitor. Apparently, these things get a little funky when they are low on battery.
So, I turned the thing off, did a little maintenance, and wah-la... my heart rate was down to 105bpm, right where it should be towards the middle of my warm-up. Still, it was quite the experience to see one's heart-rate shoot through the ceiling for no reason... 8)
-Ed
ABout four times a week I jog three miles and then bike 14 kilometers. I have no idea what a kilometer is, but I alo have no idea how to set my stationary bike's distance measurements to miles. The whole process taken about 80 minutes and it's pretty much the only time I let myself watch television -- two birds with one stone and all that...
To keep me from keeling over, I've purchased a heart monitor (harkening back to the day almost a year ago when my doctor thought I might have had a heart attack -- which I hadn't). My "target" zone is, apparently, somewhere between 123 and 162 beats per minute. Anything more than 162 and the watch starts beeping something akin to "call 911" in morse code.
Now, I've been doing this routine since January. I'm not sure that I have seen a physical difference, but I have watched that heart rate number drop steadily. After just a 10 minute jog in January my heart would be a pounding 180, my heart monitor practically pushing me into the car for a trip to the ER. These days I only break 162 after 45 minutes if I am listening to angry music on my i-pod.
So, I was quite surprised when, during my warm-up, my heart rate spiked to 165 for no reason. Walk downstairs. Turn on the treadmill. Get on the treadmill going 3mph. 10 seconds later my heart is pumping like mad. What else is there to do? I figured this was "the big one" and that at least I would "go out" while watching the season finale of "The Shield". A few seconds later and my heart stopped beating -- well, at least according to the monitor. Apparently, these things get a little funky when they are low on battery.
So, I turned the thing off, did a little maintenance, and wah-la... my heart rate was down to 105bpm, right where it should be towards the middle of my warm-up. Still, it was quite the experience to see one's heart-rate shoot through the ceiling for no reason... 8)
-Ed
posted by Ed at 1:26 AM
1 Comments:
Ya know this reminds me of the idea that if you don't like the results, manipulate the data.
Kidding!
Though I can understand the heart rate thing. I have mitral valve prolapse, and when I first had symptoms of it... good god it felt EXACTLY like a heart attack. That was NO fun for an 18 year old kid at the time!
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