Tuesday 10 May 2005
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Pic of the day: Polar F6 also doubles as a normal, albeit somewhat masculine, wristwatch. Looks right at home on my furry wrist, right? Fitness spending spreeI walk outdoors for nearly an hour a day, half of it in varied terrain. But I could not run if my life depended on it. Which it theoretically might. For instance when facing a tsunami, terrorist attack, industrial accident or violent crime. Not that any of these are leading causes of death in Norway these days. I believe more people keel over while exercising. Even so, it is mildly embarrassing to not be able to do something that toddlers do with ease. This came to the fore today, as I ran on a treadmill for the first time in my life. Here is the whole story: ***Lately, my sneakers (jogging shoes as they are more correctly called around here) are worn down so much, my feet hurt before my legs get tired. I can walk to the shop and back, half an hour each way, and only be moderately tired for a little while. But my feet hurt so much I would not attempt it the next day or the day after. This is not good. Today I went to the specialty shop "Löplabbet" (The Running Lab) in Kristiansand. I spent my lunch break there, and then a few minutes more. It took longer than expected, in other words, and there were reasons for that. I wanted a pair of new shoes, and also I was looking for a pulse watch ... a wristwatch that also counts your heartbeat. Scientific curiosity mainly, and a vague suspicion that scientific curiosity might motivate me to move around more and faster than the need for salary and groceries does. The one place where I felt confident that I might get both was Löplabbet. They are indeed a specialized shop and take pride in giving their customers the best possible service. I use the word "they" here in blind faith, as I never saw more than one mature but sporty lady, who spent a long time with the customer before me and then spent a long time with me, ignoring the telephone. Single-minded dedication, not that there's anything wrong with that. Although I am hardly a core customer. Returning customer, quite possibly, but exercise will hardly ever be a big part of my life. Much less competitive sports. I don't see myself ever getting a tax deduction for this stuff. The lady was not at all content to know my shoe size. She had me walk on a treadmill, first slowly and then faster and faster, while videotaping my feet. This had the benefit that she could show me afterward how my ankles were slightly bent, putting more pressure on the inner part of the feet. (She may also have kept the tape for the entertainment value, I suppose.) This was when I re-discovered that I cannot actually run, although I can walk pretty fast. I simply haven't run for so many years, the muscles are not ready for it even though the brain knows perfectly well how to do it. This may be of no consequence when expounding on spiritual matters, but it is slightly embarrassing in a shop that caters to professional athletes. Be that as it may, I have the inherent dignity of a paying customer, so we proceeded. The lady now had to find me a pair of shoes with extra support on the inner side. Eerily, these exist, and she found three models of my size (46 by northern European measures, I have no idea what that is in other cultures, but it is big. So much for the theory that big feet equals ... well, never mind that now. Onward!) The three models had different width, which also seems to vary wildly. Luckily the middle model fit me quite well. As long as I don't let my toe nails grow too long, at least. It is a pretty precise fit. As for the pulse watch, I just wanted a simple one. Sadly the simple one was sold out, so I bought one that was 30% more expensive and had a host of fun features. It will not just monitor my heart rate, but also tell me whether I am within the recommended range for each type of training (as if I can't do 3-digit subtraction in my head...) and calculate energy burned based on information about my heart rate, age, height and weight. In order to input my weight when first activating the watch, I had to measure it. I haven't had a bathroom scale for all these years of my living alone. Every few years I would sneak a peak at someone else's scale when visiting them, but it's been a few years since last time. So I went to another shop, the electric shop that I usually call "Shop of Angels" because they tend to have on sale exactly the things I need at any given time, not to mention that they have outright warned me against buying stuff I don't need, oh and returning my visa card to me by stopping me on the street a day or more after I originally lost it. Anyway, I went there and asked for a basic bathroom scale (do you English-speakers still refer to the things as scales now that they are electronic??). "It doesn't need to give me diet and exercise advice" I told the elder salesman, "my watch takes care of that." The scales balanced at ca 89 kg net weight, which is almost exactly the same as my height in cm over 1 meter, the old rule of thumb for ideal weight when I was young. These days people use BMI, body mass index. Mine is now 24.9, just squeezing under the limit of 25 that denotes overweight. An online friend claims that this is set artificially low so doctors can get kickbacks from referring patients to various means of reducing their weight, varying from medications to fitness studios. I am less cynical, at least as far as Norway is concerned: Here, people tend to seek out weight-reduction cures without consulting their doctor, much less getting a written prescription, except in the extreme cases. And those extreme cases, I don't think there is much doubt that they are bad for your health. Anyway, I am not as heavy as I used to be, but there is certainly no acute risk of starvation. I knew I had lost weight because my belt is now in the innermost hole, in one hole from a week or two ago. But that's one of my newest belts, and there are still some trousers in my drawers that will be a tight fit if at all. I have definitely lived with less, quite a bit less until the late 1980es when SuperWoman's father fatted me up on free dinners. That's a long story in itself. Now that I no longer can eat dinners, I may still slowly descend to my earlier natural weight. Perhaps. Although I have heard that as people grow older, their metabolism becomes more energy-conserving. All other things being equal, which they rarely are. ***Having shelled out a few hundred dollars for fitness equipment, my conscience was satisfied. No need to actually do any exercise, after such a grand effort! But God sees all things and has a disturbing sense of humor. As I was firing up Sims2 to further advance the childrearing career of Mazrim & the Cow, the lights went out. And came back on. And went out. And came back on, and went out. At this point I was frantically turning off the three power nexuses that supply my various computers and peripherals (two in my living room and one in my bedroom). That done, the power stayed off for the while needed for me to read up on my pulse measuring equipment, run through first-time setup, and put it on. Only when I was about to actually go outdoors did the power come back.
The wristwatch does not actually measure the pulse in the wrist, as you
might think. Rather there is a sensor that I strap to my chest right
under my breast I had already input my age, height and weight, so the tiny computer calculated a set of recommended heart rate intervals for different degrees of training. You are encouraged to instead let the system calculate a personal set based on how you respond to five different levels of activity. But since this was my first time using it, and I just wanted to find out how it worked, I skipped those five steps and went with the theoretical values. It is not like I was to use it to tailor my exercise after all, just see how I measured up during a walk around the hilly neighborhood. The terrain is really varied, uphills alternating with downhills of varying length and steepness. It was fascinating to see how fast my heart rate changed in response, it was literally in a heartbeat. I suppose this is a good thing, although I am not sure. Perhaps it would have been a sign of better health if I were able to ignore small changes in the workload? What did happen, though, was that after ca 20 minutes (slightly earlier than I expected) my heart rate seemed to create a new floor, higher than before I started the walk. It was still moderate, but noticeably higher than when just walking before. Now, while just walking slowly or even standing after the round trip ended, my heart continued to beat faster for some minutes before it slowed down to the original rate. I believe this may be the same as the change where the body starts burning fat instead of sugar. Actually the muscles (and certain specialized fat cells) are able to burn fat at any time, even at rest. The brown fat cells will do so if you feel cold, for instance. The number of these vary from one person to another and also may depend on whether they were needed when you grew up. Be that as it may, fat can be burned at any time except by the brain, which depends entirely on sugar. (This does not mean more sugar = more brain!) But if the body has plenty of both, it will prefer sugar and rather store the fat. This makes sense, since humans are spectacularly bad at converting sugar to fat. Most of it is lost in translation, as it were, so it is simply not worth the try (unlike animals we like to compare each other to). Instead, it takes the sugar first and stores the fat. But after a certain amount of activity, the body realizes that you are serious. You are not just strolling over to the neighbor to eat there instead of at home. So it shifts gears and starts to break down fat, a more complicated process but yielding more energy over time. (And, probably more important, this saves the body's storage of starches and sugar so the brain can continue to function even after the exercise. With the human brain being so instrumental in our survival, and also using about 20% of the body's energy at rest, keeping a sugar reserve is desperately needed.) Still, 20 minutes seems too early from what I have read. Further studies are necessary to find out whether the "second floor" of heartbeats actually corresponds to the "second wind" of exercise. This means I will have to take more such trips, and sometimes longer, sometimes faster, in order to see how my body reacts. Either that, or I'll find some website that covers the theory in detail, and save myself the trouble... ^_^
But you and me, Suede, Lazy. |
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