I haven’t been completely disciplined this summer, but I’ve probably done a HIIT workout at least 2-3 times a week this summer. There have of course been a few weeks where I was sick or out of town or something, but for the most part, I’m doing 25-30 minutes on the exercise bike fairly regularly. The results? I’m not losing much weight. I have to be honest, I am a big beer drinker, and probably have 10-20 beers a week, depending on the weather and my schedule. I know I have to quit that, because alcohol and losing weight are bitter enemies. However, I have noticed an extreme improvement in my mountain biking, especially in the climbs.

[read more…]

I recently got some new shoes, the Nike Air Triax+. They’re Awesome. So comfortable, so squishy, so supportive. I threw in my iPod+ pod and headed out for a run. It’s the first run I’ve done in a while, and I was super excited to find that since I’ve been doing HIIT on a bike, the running was the easiest I’ve done in a while. Now, I wasn’t fast, but I knocked off a quick 5k without too much hyperventilating.

It’s really sad that I used to be able to run much further, but I’m just glad I can still run that far.

The new shoes were really great, had solid support and really kept me from thinking of my feet at all, which is awesome. As for the Nike+, I love that damn thing. It honestly makes me want to run more. I can track my runs and my speed and my time and my distance all at Nike.com. It’s so cool. And it’s honestly one of the best sites I’ve seen. Ever. So easy to use, so many features, it’s like using a desktop application.

And the good news is, I supposedly burned 530 calories. That’s nice. Just got to keep doing it. I think I’m going to only do runs once a week, and keep doing the HIIT at the gym 4 times a week. Throwing in a legit bike ride once or twice a week. All things being equal, I’ll always miss one or two workouts a week, so making sure I’m going for 6-8 will keep me around 4-5 consistently.

My weight still is up and down, but I have only been eating reasonably well, not great. We’ll see.

Since I’ve been riding on the exercise bike, I’ve been doing 60 second intervals. Yesterday I did 10. The way the program on this bike works, there are 60-second intervals followed by 60-second rest periods. They alternate every 60 seconds right from the beginning, but increasing in difficulty before slowly declining at the end of the session. My first two are completely warm ups and I don’t really spin, followed by 3 and 4 where I start going after it and the resistance starts increasing. The middle six are crushing, and last two are easier as far as level of resistance, but during all of them I work hard to keep a very high cadence, and I am absolutely destroyed by the end of the 25 minute workout. I really like this pattern, and feel pretty good about sustaining it over a period of time.

I think that the 25 minutes, including warm up and cool down, gives me my best bang for the buck, and not only boosts my metabolism, but will also be significantly helping my riding strength and speed. And while I’m not pushing quite as hard as I was during sprints, the 60-second interval still assures that my heart rate is around 160-175 during the intervals, which is right around 90% my max (220 - my age (31) gives me 189 for a max).

As for weight loss, I haven’t been eating quite as good as I’d like, and with the long weekend we just had, I’ve drank way more beer than could be productive. However, I’m still losing weight, and with the calories I’ve been consuming, I must be doing something right. Now I just need to get my eating to be a disciplined as my riding.