One of my New Year's Resolutions was to blog once a month... good thing February gave me an extra day this year! I'm cutting it a little close!
Mitch and I have really been focused on fitness lately! In January we started a 3-month fitness class at our gym. We have a 20 minute class lecture on Mondays and Wednesdays about everything from nutrition to cardiovascular health to strength training. We also receive a comprehensive fitness test at the beginning, middle, and end of the course. We are measured for aerobic index (
VO2 Max), flexibility, strength, endurance, and body composition. Our instructor gives us an "exercise prescription" based on the results of our fitness test. This tells us how many minutes of cardio we need to do per week (and at what level of intensity) and how much weight to lift on each of the 18 machines in the circuit. We are supposed to do 2 days of weights and 3 days of cardio per week. Typically I have been doing only 1 weights day and 3-4 cardio days. This class has really boosted my interest in the topic, so....
I bought a Wahoo Fitness wireless heart rate monitor so I can basically use my iPhone to do most of the same things that a GPS watch can do for $80 instead of $300.
True, carrying the iPhone on my arm is a little bulkier than a GPS watch, but it's cheaper and I'm happy with all the functionality. So I've gone fitness app crazy! The first app I added was WahooFitness which captures your heart rate, location, speed, and distance during running and biking. There are many screens of data, but this one is my favorite because you can see how much time you spent in each heart rate zone.
But a better app that does all of those things is RunKeeper. That is definitely my favorite outdoor app. One big difference between Wahoo and RunKeeper is that you can select not only running and biking but also walking, hiking, skiing, snowboarding, skating, swimming, rowing, elliptical and other stationary workout machines. Also with RunKeeper you can create Routes that you typically do so you can see your "track best" so to speak. My goal is eventually to do a 10k. I wanted to do that this March, but we'll be out of town the weekend of the big Houston 10k. Here is my RunKeeper
profile. Below is a picture of a map generated from my longest run to date: 5.3 miles!
My newest app is the iSpinner app. Mitch loves biking. We take a spinning class together on Tuesday nights. RunKeeper doesn't do very well with stationary activities, so I decided to get iSpinner which gives you a live intensity graph in addition to all the other heart rate measurements. I can't get cadence on the bike since we don't have sensors on the bikes, but eventually the gym is getting that equipment. Anyway, this is the type of output I can get from the iSpinner app. For this workout, I did 30 minutes on the erg (rowing machine). Every 2 minutes, I started with a 30 second sprint and then 1:30 of steady rowing. I rowed in college, so this is a typical game we play to stay engaged for long duration erg workouts. The graph really helps me push myself on stationary workouts.
February 4 was the Clear Creek Community Church
Crossfit Challenge (enough C's for you??). Mitch and I both competed. We have been doing informal "crossfit" type workouts with a friend of ours for several months. But this was our first official Crossfit WOD (workout of the day). The challenge consisted of pushups, jumping on a box, squats with weights, and jumping rope. We trained by doing a similar workout 3 times before the event. I was in the first heat - so nervous!! You have 12 minutes to do as many rounds as possible. I completed 4 rounds. I am totally ok with that! I was in the bottom 1/4 of the intermediate group. Mitch was in the advanced group of course and did very well. The results are posted on the link above. I would love to do Crossfit on a regular basis (if it weren't $150/month). We are trying to get our gym to create a space for Crossfit and to get some equipment. The folks that came to this competition who regularly do Crossfit are amazing...they are so strong and can totally blow you away with their strength and endurance. Another appealing thing about Crossfit is that the intense part of the workout is usually just 12-20 minutes.
Here is a video of someone doing the challenge:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ufq4xti7X8
Here are our pictures from the event:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.775888192078.2194632.39701992&type=1
This is Mitch and our friend Dan afterwards..... :-)
We have really enjoyed working out together. It's good bonding time! And besides...burning all those calories together allows us to eat meals like this together! This was our V-day meal: bacon-wrapped tenderloin from a local butcher, roasted asparagus with parmesan, my mom's chocolate sheet cake and chocolate covered strawberries! Ok maybe we overdid it a little on the chocolate.
If you have any other fitness apps that you like, I'd love to hear about them!
