Monday, January 18, 2010

Day 696- When you feel loose just let it rip!

Today, I felt great! I had a nice solid 7 hours of sleep. Did something I normally do not do I actually warmed up on a lifecycle before I did my hour's ride. Man, what difference! I came out like I was after someone who just stole my wallet. I burned 176 calories in the first ten minutes. That is warp speed when it is compared to what I did the last two days. On Saturday I burned 140 calories in the first ten minutes. On Sunday I burned 148 in the first ten minutes. Why the difference? It must be attitude and feeling real good.

I am always amazed at the process I go through when I start pedaling. First I feel a challenge in my breathing and my legs feel a little tight. Then as I continue to pedal I challenge myself to pedal harder then my breathing gets easier. As I increase the speed of my pedaling my breathing becomes less of a challenge. It is then, that I challenge myself to pedal even harder because I know there is another more challenging threshold I can cross. When I start to feel this easiness of both breathing and pedaling the game begins.

The game is real simple, can I burn more calories in 60 minutes than I ever have before? Despite my overall state and mental capacity I know the number, burning 1,013 calories in one hour of pedaling. I also know that I am not always going to win every time. The purpose of the game is to keep the challenge fun and exciting. As I get into a flow I start looking for little victories I can claim as I attack the ultimate prize. I know the pace needed to win, burn x number of calories per minute. The x number is - 16.9.When I burn that amount of calories each minute for 60 minutes I win!

So, in the first ten minutes today I was ahead of the winning pace. Isn't that awesome? I was burning 17.6 calories a minute I was flying. It is funny when you are going at that pace you are not aware of much. You are not aware of the fact that you are breathing a little hard or that you are pedaling real hard. Nope, for all you know there might be a tornado going outside! When I am locked into a great flow of burning 17.6 calories a minute everything is tuned out. That is why I am amazed by the number of people that listen to music when they do their cardio workouts. My theory is they are not locked into the challenge enough. Now please do not misunderstand me, I am sure the music inspires them to work out harder and makes the task of working out more enjoyable. However for me, I just love the process and do not feel the need to enhance the workout any more than it is now. The challenge is all I need.

As I kept the pace through the first ten minutes going, I realized I had a good chance of burning over a 1,000 calories in an hour. While I was in between the 10 and 20 minute mark I said to myself I need to burn 350 calories in 20 minutes. Although I burned 345 I was still ahead of the pace needed to burn over 1,000 calories in an hour. After I burned 345 calories in the first 20 minutes my calorie burning pace was 17.25 calories per minute.If you multiply 17.25 times 60 minutes that equals 1,035 calories burned in an hour. Now that I am sitting here typing I realize I burned 168 calories in the next 10 minutes . So, after 30 minutes I had burned 513. Quick math tells us that 513 times 2 equals 1026 calories. I was still winning.

Hear this, I wanted to win. I felt like I would win. So why didn't I win? Simple because in the next 30 minutes I only burned 442 calories. You see, their is a reason why in 701 attempts why I have burned 1,000 or more calories five times. Keep in mind the 701 attempts have now yielded 14 times where I have burned 500 or more calories in 30 minutes. My total for today was a calorie burn of 955 calories. Not bad, an increase of 82 more calories yesterday in the same amount of time!

Spent the next minutes of today's workout doing the plank for 17 minutes and 600 crunches.

In this post today I attempted for you the reader to get into my head as I challenge myself on this exciting daily journey I hope I have. Please feel free to leave whatever comments or feedback you care to write.Thank you -the madman on the lifecycle-

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