New Toy: Heart Monitor/ Lie Detector

Yes. I finally bought one. Been meaning to try this for a long time. Expensive. but interesting. I'm finding out two things: 1, I'm lazier than I even thought. 2, I actually get quite a lot of exercise in my ordinary daily life.

One thing I've never been is competitive, especially in the physical arena. If someone else wants to get there first, I'll gladly step aside -- it makes absolutely no difference to my self-esteem. The good side is that if you are someone for whom getting there first is a peak experience, you're guaranteed to have one if you exercise with me. The downside is that you'd have to ignite my clothing to get me to move quickly.

This isn't the best situation in terms of getting my heart beating. My resting heart-rate (= on waking up) is about 52. I would love to let you think that this means I'm a great athlete, but in my case it means that : my heart is slow. I try to make myself exercise reasonably hard because I know it's good for the bod. Here's where the heart monitor comes in -- lots of times I'll think I'm working my tail off but when I check the heart monitor it says, "Actually, no, you're not."

I've entered all my settings -- my age and weight and all that -- so it's not that it's comparing me to other people. I've established my "zones" of where I should be in order to burn fuel. The ugly truth is that I'm a slug trapped in the body of a human. Occasionally someone tells me that I look like I'm in shape, and though I thank them, inside I feel like an impostor

But back to the good news:

I've been measuring my rides to and from the MAX station and guess what? That really IS exercise! It really counts. It's short, but I do it four times each work day - home to train, train to work, work to train, and train to home.

Next: Whatever gets your heart beating. (Should I take up coffee?)