<p>I think the best way to look at exercise is to forget any calories that may or may not be burned. Afterall, if you subtract out the calories that you burn just lying in bed, the extra calories from almost any exercise are negligible. If you need to lose (or gain) weight, that’s on the food end of things. The exercise, however, is super important for health and fitness. For example, exercise is the single best way to increase sensitivity to insulin, which means you will need to produce less, you’ll reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes as a result. And, your body will tend to store less fat. So, definitely, keep walking!</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>Good advice. Thanks.</p>
<p>One thing to keep in mind is that while walking may burn about 100 calories per mile, you burn calories lying down on the couch watching TV, just not as many of them. It’s easy to overestimate the effect of extra exercise. That said, I find a tiny bit of exercise makes a huge difference to me. It doesn’t make me hungrier, and it seems to kickstart my metabolism.</p>
<p>GMTA, cross posted with Idad!</p>
<p>BCE- it’s hard to calculate the calories you take in during a race unless you prepare your own drinks, etc. The Gatorade is usually mixed up in batches and really varies on how diluted it might be. It varies from aid station to aid station! I also probably grabbed up things I don’t even remember! I know I had a couple of Clif Shots at one point. And the sugared Pepsi that I got starting at 22, but I bet I only had about 6-8 total ounces of that.</p>
<p>4.01 miles trying for 135 hr. I don’t know how I feel about this, it seems so wrong to run so slow :). I did a lot better keeping the heart rate down today, and I think that putting in some downhill time helped. One problem I can see with this is the amount of time these runs take. In order to get the miles in, I have to run a lot longer than usual, and it’s hard enough to fit everything in now. </p>
<p>MOWC, how long does a person have to do this before they know if it’s working? I can see why people give up on it.</p>
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<p>Me, too. Not the least of which is that I’m exercising when I would be noshing away on before-dinner snacks. My workout eats up what would be one of two big snack times during the day!</p>
<p>Now, if could just come up with a midnight workout! :)</p>
<p>I think I started seeing an improvement in pace after a few days or a week. If you are tired, or it is hot, it affects the HR. It is frustrating, but I liked the fact that I could finish an 8 mile run and feel like I could go do it again instead of feeling like I couldn’t get up the driveway! It definitely is a method that works better on flat courses or treadmill.</p>
<p>MOWC:</p>
<p>I think one of the pitfalls in all these training formulas is the tendency to be very impatient and lose sight of the fact that it may be a process that takes months if not years. I know that I simply cannot hold my heart rate below 75% while hiking up a mountain with 20 pounds on my back. So, it may be all well and good for the formula to say “hold my heart rate to 70%”, but that is not happening this week and probably not next week. Doesn’t mean that you have to throw the advice out, it just means that it might have to be a long term goal. Maybe all I can do is work towards that goal – slow down enough and use a rest step cadence enough to hold my heart rate down to 82% of my max. That’s progress. Maybe next month, it’ll be 80%. Maybe I can’t do a walking lunge, even though it’s in a workout program I want to do. So what? Do a stationary split squat and maybe the walking lunge will become an option a few months down the road. I darn sure can’t do most of the agility ladder stuff, certainly not at the speed it’s supposed to be done. Who cares? I bet if I do a little bit every workout, at whatever speed I can manage, I’ll be able to do it a lot better next March.</p>
<p>I learned that lesson the hard way, when I hopped on the $10 yard sale exercise bike to do “intervals” the first day and found out that my belly bounced off my thighs every time I pushed the pedals! My all out sprint when I first got the Airdyne is now my easy warm-up/cool down speed. Heck, when I first started walking up the hill from the river, I couldn’t keep my heart rate below 90% of my max unless I stopped for five minutes, bent over, hands on my knees, panting like a dog.</p>
<p>What’s the hurry? At our age, we aren’t going to make to the Olympics! it’s all about the journey… Rather than let the frustrations of not being able to do it according to the formula be an obstacle, just enjoy working towards improvement.</p>
<p>Exercise is a good thing for me in that when I’m exercising, I’m not eating! I usually don’t feel like eating much after exercise either, so that is a good thing. </p>
<p>I honestly don’t think I’m smart enough to follow all of these formulas and training methods. I do track what I do in terms of intensity (as in level 10 or whatever) but you all lose me on heart rate. Maybe if I ever get around to running (or the sabaray shuffle) it will mean more to me.</p>
<p>I understand what youre saying Idad, but its like you always say, keep the goal the goal. My goal isnt weight loss or improved fitness, or to lower my heart rate to a certain level before I die. My goal is to run a half marathon in about 2.15 hours this October. There are many paths to that goal, and my journey right now is about finding the path that works for me at this time in my life. No, Im not going to the Olympics anytime soon, but I am running some races this year, and I want to train in such a way as to perform at whatever my best is. Thats what makes it fun for me. The frustrations are just a part of the learning process for a new runner like me, and they really are not taking away from my enjoyment of working towards my goal. </p>
<p>I dont think I could make myself workout just for the sake of working out, I need something like a race to work towards. We’re all different and have different reasons for doing what we do. This is just what works for me.</p>
<p>Easy 3 miles last night. Missed my interval session. Daughter was in hs talent show. </p>
<p>Boys track coach is allowing me to run intervals with the boys team this spring. Will be humbling I’m sure. My daughter didn’t want me to run with the girls team. Said I would be too much of a creeper.</p>
<p>Blankmind - ditto for me too</p>
<p>We played for 100 minutes and split sets. He won the first set 6-1 and I won the second set 7-6. We had a warm-up session and then started playing games. I did need the Gatorade on changeovers and started out with sips. I increased intake on changeovers to about 1/3rd of a gulp in the second set and that amount worked just right. My performance in the first set was awful - I felt like I wasn’t getting as much energy - I was also somewhat rusty and he was really nailing his serves. In the second set, I felt that energy levels were just right and I wasn’t getting tired on long points - he did get tired on long points.</p>
<p>Overall consumption was 1/3rd of the bottle or about 70 calories. so we’re talking about 7 calories ever ten minutes. In the grand scheme of things (say 1,000 calories burned overall), 70 calories isn’t much. But if it improves performance considerably (and I don’t feel hungry during the match), then it’s 70 calories well spent. I wonder about the effect though. Is marginal need that small or does taking the drink trigger something in the body that generates more sugar from a metabolic process?</p>
<p>Over in the next court, there was a college player hitting with his father (college player was much better). He called us over as we started to leave and asked if we’d like to hit next week (we were both flattered as geezers getting asked by a good player to hit). So the guy that I played took his information and I’ll get the information from him. I only have two days a week for tennis and I’m pretty sure that I won’t be playing a lot of tennis next week.</p>
<p>The guy that I hit with also didn’t get any serves by me. He’s 6’5" and 240 pounds and he can really hit fast serves but he didn’t get any aces today. He normally gets five to ten. I worked a lot harder on getting a jump on serve returns.</p>
<p>My sugars count for the day is at 25 grams which is still considered low but it’s high for me. I suspect that I will use Gatorade regularly for tennis now though I think that I will stick with the idea of only using as much as my body says that I need.</p>
<p>5K treadmill run, pretty good clip for me. </p>
<p>First daffodil opened this morning. :)</p>
<p>Nice endurance, BC!</p>
<p>blankmind - I have been where you are. I hired a running coach to help me improve my running (she ended up “talking me into” doing a marathon). but the first thing she did is have me do most of my runs at a low HR. I had been doing a bootcamp twice a week that entailed an anywhere from 2 to 6 mile run, and trying to keep up with all the alphas, I was running all of the distances at 175+ HR. She thought that running everything as if it was a tempo run was counterproductive. I couldn’t believe how slow I had to run to maintain 135 – I literally could walk faster. But, I did improve, and ran my hilly half marathon with a time of 2:02. I continued the low HR training for my full marathon. She had me do my long runs at the low HR and then several shorter runs doing the week at a much higher HR, tempo runs and intervals/speed work.
I am convinced that the low HR training method prevents injuries, but don’t have any real evidence of that, except to compare my experience to comparable runners in my boot camp. Long winded way to say, hang in there!</p>
<p>25 minute treadmill intervals.</p>
<p>Nice job, Deborah.</p>
<p>All I’m saying is that, just because the formula says to run at a 135 heart rate pace that you will be able to stick to 135 on the nose when you first start trying to do it. So, maybe it’s 140 now, going as slowly as you can stand. Maybe next month it’s 135. </p>
<p>I’m not saying that’s it’s bad to have performance goals. I’m just saying that they “training formulas” are, at best, pretty imprecise. And, to top that off, they are usually geared towards people in their 20s. You can buy the concept of a sustained slow pace to improve endurance efficiency without being married to a specific number, especially if that number is driving you crazy! Your slow pace heart rate is going to be different from my slow pace heart rate and different from MOWC’s slow pace heart rate and probably all of them are going to be different from the guy who came up with the target numbers.</p>
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<p>The rationale I’ve heard for it is that training at high high rates, while good for certain aspects of conditioning, does not allow the heart to completely fill and pump the maximum amount of blood/oxygen per beat. The low heart rate training increases the amount of blood the heart is capable of pumping per beat. There are also supposedly some muscle cell level adaptations that are way over my head.</p>
<p>idad, I have actually been wondering if it was really necessary to keep it below 135, whether it would be ok to start higher and work my way down, but everything I’ve read says no. I’m willing to give it a chance and see what happens, but at some point I’ll need to gear up a little for racing. I think I have plenty of time to test it out though.</p>
<p>The low heart rate training is quite precise, but the writings as of a couple of years ago questioned how well it is calculated when it comes to very young runners or over 50 runners. Again- I think you really need to know your max heart rate. If you really do it the way Maffetone promotes, when you hit that 135 HR and your watch beeps, you stop and walk! You keep every step under your MAF number. A number of extremely fast, record holding triathletes and distance runners have used the MAF method (another term for the low HR training) and manage to slow themselves down to what would be the equivalent of our 13 minute miles, so it CAN be done. My most difficult time with it was in Colorado at altitude when I could barely WALK without going over my MAF number!</p>
<p>For most fitness runners, I think a more workable program is to figure out your zones and make sure you keep your easy runs in the middle or lower part of your aerobic zone. That’s pretty much how I do my training. But, again, I know my max HR and my resting HR and I calculate those zones from Roy Benson’s books/formulas.</p>
<p>[BARNES</a> & NOBLE | Heart Rate Training by Roy Benson | NOOK Book (eBook), Paperback](<a href=“http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/heart-rate-training-roy-t-benson/1100301205]BARNES”>http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/heart-rate-training-roy-t-benson/1100301205)</p>
<p>This book is really easy to understand and is a pretty good read. My son did some training with Roy Benson at some summer camps years ago and Roy is a great guy and is still running at a nice clip at 72 or so.</p>