Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

Another obsession is brewing. Like I don't have enough obsessions already: cycling for hours on end, eyeing the calories burned number on the Garmin, keeping the speed over 17 mph . . .. Now I'm all ga-ga over heart rate. I had an idea that heart rate is directly connected to calories burned, and calories burned are directly connected to pounds lost, and pounds lost are directly connected to my happiness. So I began reading anything and everything about heart rate, how to use it to keep the pounds off. During my reading, I came across aerobic vs. anaerobic and became all confused. I get the idea of aerobic. Aerobic is the fat burning stage. This is pretty much what my entire summer ride consisted of. Long, slow distances (LSD), hence losing 12 pounds in two months. The anaerobic, though, throws me because if I'm understanding it correctly, this is a level you don't want to reach often as it burns carbohydrates rather than fat. But the anaerobic level is necessary to bui...

The other day I talked about how I was going to work on doing interval training to see if I can improve my run time for the 5k. After I talked about doing so, I read a lot the next day about how to go about doing effective interval training. I learned the low speed I had planned on wasn't low enough and my high speed wasn't high enough. I was only going from a low speed of 5 mph to a high speed of 7 mph. One source suggested that to have success with interval training the runner should really slow down. A significant difference needs to be evident for the interval training to be effective. Because of this advice, I changed my workout strategy. I ended up warming up at 5 mph for five minutes then went to 8 mph for 30 seconds then down to 4 mph for a minute and repeated this 8 mph/4 mph back and forth for 20 minutes. I loved it. And according to my treadmill, I did 2 miles in under 22 minutes. I've struggled with running an 11 minute mile but was able to do it by doing the in...