Heart rate monitor, 66 mile day. MyMaps

I decided to finally break down and get a heart rate monitor. My reasoning was, partly, so as to have some concrete figures to connect with my fitness endeavors when I speak with my physician. As I think I've mentioned, I've had trouble so far getting helpful input from my physician on my fitness program.

Why? Most doctors seem set up to dispense very generic fitness advice: if your health is decent but you're not sufficiently active, they'll tell you to try and do some moderate fitness activities. Take walks, ride your bike, take the stairs rather than the elevator. Most doctors seem set up to dispense this kind of advice.

To top it all off, most doctors I've met with are not overly athletic folks. Ok, maybe they're not fat, and may even be fairly thin. But do they engage in intense athletic activities? Do they have a strong competitive drive when they do fitness? If they don't, I question how capable they will be in dispensing advice to those who are competitive.

I, for example, have yet to find a doctor who can give me meaningful advice about what I'm doing, at my age, for fitness. I can tell them I ride hard when I'm on my bike, but what does that mean? I went up a hill, riding as hard as I could? I submit that, if the doctor has not him/herself done some competitive athletics, they're not going to have much of a clue about what I, as a sometime competitive bicycle racer, mean when I say 'm riding hard.

The heart rate monitor is meant to help me communicate to them better what I'm doing. "You know, doctor, my heart rate on my two-hour ride yesterday was averaging about 135 beats per minute (bpm hereafter). I went up to 165 bpm and sustained that for about five minutes at one point, though." I hope by presenting the matter in those terms I might get some helpful input.

Which brings me to my results so far. I've actually only used the monitor on a couple of rides and on one upper-body workout session so far, and the results are interesting. I got a less expensive model, by the way--the Nike Triax C5 (ca. $49.00, shipping included, ordered through Amazon), a picture of which I'll include below.

I have to say that, preliminarily, I'm happy with this monitor. It's true that I don't have much to compare it with and that I've barely used it. But stay tuned to find out whether I continue to be satisfied with it.

As you can see, it looks like a wristwatch. And, as the photo indicates, it does tell time. But its significant function for my purposes is to read heart rate. It does this by wirelessly transmitting, from a corresponding strap you put around your chest, your heart-beat rate to the watch, which can be set to display that information. I will likely do a more in-depth review of this monitor in a future post.

Results so far. 120 bpm is a pretty comfortable rate for me: I feel like I'm hardly working at that rate, really. 150 bpm is a vigorous work rate, but one I can fairly easily sustain. I hit 160 bpm+ by the top of a long hill. Once I get to 170 bpm or so, I'm reaching the point where I start to go into oxygen deficit. I.e., I can hit that rate and sustain it, but my heart and lungs are just about at the point where they can't keep up with my leg muscles' demand for oxygen. Finally, on a particularly intense, but short chase, hit 190 bpm this past Saturday (and that at about the 55 mile mark of our 66 mile day!). I think my heart rate can go yet higher than that, but so far 190 bpm is the highest I've seen.

Now, contrast that with the heart-rate poster that hangs in our building's exercise room. There it says that the maximum heart rate for a 50 year old is 175 bpm. Well, I can tell you that I've exceeded that by quite a bit and lived to tell about it. Maximum heart-rate calculators found on the internet also tell you that, for a 50 year old, 170-175 bpm is supposed to be the maximum.

But according to my experiences so far, that's hogwash. And it seems there is plenty of information on the internet that calls into question the standard formula for calculating maximum heart rate as well. See the following link, for example: http://www.thefactsaboutfitness.com/research/max.htm . There is also a New York Times article, published on April 24th, 2001 in the Health section, entitled "'Maximum' Heart Rate Theory Is Challenged."

So, once again I'll be using myself as a guinea pig. I'll keep track of my own heart rates, discuss these with my doctor, and try to determine whether there are any principles that apply to aging and fitness--one of the main interests of this blog. Now, on to other concerns.

We did a 66 mile day this past weekend, so we continue building up mileage. A little stiffness and soreness developed in my left knee, so I'm a bit concerned about that. I would have guessed, if a knee problem were to crop up, it would be in my right knee, since my left foot is a little differently aligned to the knee than on my right leg (owing to a bad sprain I had in my right ankle as a kid). But it's actually my left knee that's started bothering me. Anyway, something I'll be keeping tabs on as cycling season continues.

As a final topic for this entry, I'll just mention that I've discovered how to use google's MyMaps. It's a bit rough around the edges, but it's something with great potential for cyclists. One of the really nice features is that you can draw lines wherever you want (you're not limted to following roads). In combination with Satellite view, this enables cyclists to trace out routes that follow bike paths instead of roads, and to easily calculate mileage. I'm highly pleased with and enthused about this.

I have to say, though, that I've had a few issues. One is that the mileage calculator that follows the cursor as you trace out your map can interfere with your view of the map: couldn't they make this thing more transparent? Someone dropped the ball a bit on this issue. Likewise, I've created two maps which start and end in the same place, but take differing routes to get there (except the last 8 miles or so). Well, it seems that the last 8 miles of one or other route keep getting cut off. I've tried correcting this by re-extending the adumbrated route, but when I did that, the other route got shortened by 8 miles. Go figure.

There are obviously still some bugs that need to be worked out of this system, and some interface improvements are needed. But what I've seen so far looks really promising. Anyway, see below a sample map I made up to demonstrate some preliminary results (the red lines represent bike paths while the blue lines represent city streets):


View plank rd clinic <--> cedarburg in a larger map

60 mile day, preliminary review of modified Power 90

Well, we've now managed to break the 55 mile mark we set in late May--but not by much. We did 60 miles this past weekend, and I was surprised at how much it took out of me. Recalling, however, that although I took it pretty easy for the first 15 miles or so, we got into kind of a rush about 25 miles in and I really pushed it after that--especially between about miles 35 and 45. And even after that there was at least one fairly long hill, and hills are always daunting on a recumbent tandem (you can't use your body weight to help you stomp your way up the hill).

Overall I'm pretty satisfied with the effort. I am building up toward something with these mileage increases: a hoped-for weekend tour later this month. I'm not sure we'll be able to pull that off though. Doing this sort of mileage also takes me back to more youthful days when I would hit the road for long-distance touring of a month or more. I may never be able to do that sort of thing again, but a guy can dream, can't he?

I'll also include in this entry a preliminary review of the modified Power 90 routine we began doing a couple of weeks ago. First, a word on what the phrase "modified Power 90" means.

As was the case with the P90X regime, we've excerpted parts of another regime(s) called Power 90 to create our own upper-body workout routine. I have parenthesis around the "s" on the word "regime" because there is more than one regime called Power 90 and because we've excerpted parts of two different Power 90 regimes.

I'm aware that this probably sounds confusing. And it is, in fact, confusing. But blame the company that puts out these video workouts for that.

I've blogged previously about how the company that puts out P90X and the Power 90 regimes is engaging in a practice I called product/market obfuscation. As I mentioned, I may later post a more philosophical entry about that practice. But suffice for now to observe that this is why my description of our modified Power 90 routine might sound confusing (a look at the wikipedia entry for Tony Horton [under the videography heading] contains a list of exercise videos he's done, which can help allay at least some of the confusion).

Not wanting to make myself a marketing organ for that company, or to support their ethically marginal practices in marketing their products, I will simply observe that one of the routines we've excerpted comes from what seems to be the standard, and older, Power 90 regime. The other comes from a newer one that has the additional label "master's series." The first is called circuit 3-4 sculpt, and the second is called circuit 5-6 sculpt.

I gather from what's said in the videos that we've excerpted some of the most advanced portions of the respective regimes. I presume that each of those regimes is likely a 90 day fitness course that builds to more lengthy and more strenuous exercises toward the end. So we've essentially skipped the introductory and intermediate portions of the two regimes and gone straight to the advanced portions.

The focus in each of the routines we've excerpted is on upper body strengthening. There are just a few leg exercises--which is what we were looking for, i.e., a minimal amount of lower body exercising (we get our lower body exercise primarily from cycling) and an emphasis on strengthening the upper body.

I observed in a previous entry that I was pleasantly surprised by the modified routine we've put together. That opinion remains. This is a nice selection of exercises, alternating between use of weights (dumbbells) and calisthenics. It's not as strenuous as P90X and doesn't take as much time (roughly 40 minutes as opposed to 55 minutes). The icing on the cake for me is that it ends up being pretty aerobic. As I mentioned in a previous entry, I had decided that we needed to switch to something that would involve aerobic upper-body activities, and this looks like a really good answer.

I should mention in that regard that it is aerobic only if you try and keep pace with the video, which we do. If you use the pause button, it won't be as aerobic, and it will also take longer.

I want to mention in closing that, when doing P90X, I was trying to build up some muscle, so I was generally using heavier weight and doing less repetitions--in cases where weights (dumbbells) are being used. Though I've been following pretty much that same practice with our modified Power 90 routines, I will begin experimenting with using less weight and doing more repetitions. This will have the dual effect of making the workout more aerobic, as well as providing me with a little bit of a break from the rigorousness of the P90X workouts I'll be doing during the shorter part of the year.

As a final summary to this entry, an overview of our current annual fitness regime.

- workout 6 times a week, 4 days (Tues., Thurs., Sat., and Sun.) cycling or walking and 2 days (Mon. and Fri.) strength training.

- cycling days see us either riding on the road for between 6 and 70 miles, or riding the stationary bikes indoors for 1/2 hour, depending on weather. we have the option of replacing cycling with walking--which is more likely to happen during the colder months.

- strength training, done on Mondays and Fridays, will involve doing our modified Power 90 routine from about April through November. From December through March we'll be doing our modified P90X.

I should also mention that used copies of both these DVD's can be found on Amazon for between $5.00 and $15.00. eBay is another likely source for cheap copies of these video workouts. Stay tuned for my next entry.