NPR Fitness Group

[Phoebe]

That's incredible! I'm telling you they did something to you in that operation. Are you even sure you're the same person now? Could you be some kind of machine accessing the memories of your former self? Maybe you are a robot assassin. Right now you're just training.

[Tahlvin]

I had a follow up endoscopy Tuesday to see how my throat is doing with treatment for the swallowing problems I had. Due to all the running, my resting heart rate is usually in the 45-50 beat per minute range, which set off all sorts of alarms when they hooked me up to the monitors. They had to adjust the monitor.

[Phoebe]

Tahlvin, I hate to be the messenger but it's better for you to know the truth. You're a cylon.

[Tahlvin]

That actually explains a lot.

[Ronster]

My cylon detector confirms it...

[Tahlvin]

Shit. One mile into my morning run and the treadmill broke. The belt had been slipping a bit, so I tried tightening it, and it ended up just giving up and not moving at all. Which, happening in mid-stride, could have been very problematic, but thankfully wasn't.

[Phoebe]

So what I hear you saying is that your treadmill, being a lesser and more primitive machine, couldn't handle your running and broke down... The signs are adding up rather quickly now.

[Tahlvin]

To be fair, the treadmill is almost 8 years old and has served me well. Lately, it's been getting about 50-55 miles per week. Every machine needs routine maintenance, and eventually reaches the end of its useful life. And that may be what's happened. I've contacted customer care to see if it's worth it to try to repair it, and what the cost and timeline of that would be compared to getting a completely new one, so we'll see what happens.

[Tahlvin]

Went ahead and ordered a new treadmill, which is supposed to be delivered and setup sometime on Wednesday this week (I was expecting it to be a couple of weeks before it would be delivered). So now I have 2 evenings to disassemble and remove the old treadmill and clear a path for them to deliver and assemble the new one. And then I have to figure out what to do with an old, no-longer-functional treadmill.

I think we'll eventually have enough old, broken down stuff sitting on our seldom-used sun porch that I'll just call someone to come out and pick it all up and haul it all away at once.

[Tahlvin]

New treadmill arrived on Wednesday. I've discovered a few things. 1) Taking a couple days off of running really sets you back, and it takes more than a few days to get back in the groove. 2) Riding a stationary bike is a very poor substitute for running in terms of burning calories. 3) I believe the incline on my old treadmill was miscalibrated.

Thursday morning was my first time back on the treadmill, and I could only do half of my 4-mile run at a 7:30/mile pace. Friday morning I ran 7 miles at 8:00/mile pace, but it felt like the incline was about 1 degree higher than what I was used to. This morning I was able to run 11 miles at an average 8:00/mile pace, which was short of the 14 miles I wanted to run. But again, it felt like the incline was steeper than what I was used to, and I was worried that running the whole 14 miles was going to be too hard on my calves, so I opted to shorten the run and spend a few weeks working back up to the appropriate distance.

[Phoebe]

I have never run on the treadmill. I'm so bad at running I feel like I would just fall off and smack my face on the thing. I run around my neighborhood or sometimes now I go to the track and run laps. I really like running on the track because the surface is so nice and it's very meditative. The neighborhood is very pleasant except that in some parts the driveways slope too far one direction and it's hard on the knees and ankles.

I'm glad you have sorted out your incline thing; Is it better to run with a little bit of incline for comfort, or is it something you choose to intensify the workout?

[Phoebe]

Hit my front squat max lift today and I'm pretty excited about it!

[Tahlvin]

[Phoebe]

Running usually causes my body to incline to the horizontal relatively quickly, but I'm doing better! I do think being able to run is an important part of the overall fitness I'm aiming for, so it has to get done.

[Tahlvin]

14 miles in a little under 2 hours. The endurance is still there but the speed has dropped off a little bit. Not sure if it's the new treadmill, or coinciding with that was a change to cut the dosage of one of my medications in half, and I'm wondering if that had an affect on my performance. Oh well, the thing is I'm getting and staying healthy. Hopefully that will help if/when I end up getting COVID-19.

[Tahlvin]

Alright, I think I figured out how to configure the new treadmill to feel more like the old treadmill and better match my running style. This morning's run was a nice 10-miler finished in 89 minutes. So now I will hopefully be able to start to increase my speed and distance back up to where I was before the old treadmill broke down.

[Phoebe]

Wow, that's incredible! They made you bionic, I'm telling you. The question is why? When you find yourself parachuting out of an airplane someday after getting your secret instructions, remember you were warned.

[Tahlvin]

10 miles in 80 minutes, and it felt great!

[Tahlvin]

6 miles in 45 minutes. Nice to know I can maintain that 7:30 min/mile pace for that long again.

[Kyle]

Okay, y'all. We've had our fun over here. Last week was supposed to be the week that my family went camping at the beach. Obviously that was cancelled, so they had lazy party week here (I was working from home). There was a lot of food, a lot of snacking and a lot of nightly drinking for the adults. But we decided over the weekend that we're going to die if we keep doing that during quarantine- so it's back to showing some discipline. Yoga and shoulder workouts in the morning with a two mile walk when it's not raining. Three one-plate meals a day with no snacking, and 64 oz of water. We've got a check in chart and everything. The goal is to make it to the end of April with healthy choices.