Finally...some real accumulation

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

If you don’t belong to a club or work out indoors, there is no doubt that it’s tougher to stick with an exercise program through the winter months in Northeast Ohio. Let’s face it…only the true diehards stay on a bike in these conditions. Walking in the neighborhood can be very problematic when few people shovel their walks, waiting instead for city-owned sidewalk vehicles to perform the task – if their municipality even does it. And once they do, the sidewalks are slick as hell. The Metroparks are challenging, too, and I see about 10% of the usage in the winter that I’ll experience in the summer and fall months.

But…calories don’t take this time off. In fact, they seem to accelerate their assault on our will power all through the month of December. They do at our house, anyway. I’ve recently moved to an apple diet. I have one for breakfast and take two more for lunch. I’ll do this three days a week to see if I can keep the consumption of hollow calories at bay for at least part of the holidays. Not really a good plan…but that’s me.

There is no good answer. You simply have to keep it up to keep the pounds off. I shovel my drive and always will. Just one more way to get in a workout. Sometimes I go next door and start on the neighbors. They’ve never asked me to leave. I suppose I take some measure of pride from being the nut that’s doing all the shoveling or the kook that’s running through deep snow in shorts and a t-shirt. I use the snow to my advantage in other ways, as well. I don’t own snow shoes or cross country skis…and I should…but I still can put on the pack and with a good pair of boots, just walk through deep snow. I’ll head off-trail hiking and even without the pack, can generate heart rates easily high enough to achieve a solid work out. That…and the serenity factor raises dramatically since no one else is doing it…you’ll be alone. Even in my advanced years, I continue to get the sleds out and head for the hills in the Metroparks. It’s fun and you really do have to labor some to get back up the hill.

I managed a fourth consecutive day of running. The snow as falling madly as I began and I knew I’d have some fantastic shoveling to do when I got home and for the rest of the evening, most likely. I ran in the tire tracks on the bridle trails and managed to hit 32 minutes on a day I was planning for 20. The heel continues to show improvement, though I think I’ll give it tomorrow off and try the trainer.

I wasn’t disappointed when I got home. I had about 3 inches in the drive, which I pushed in 20 minutes. Two hours later, I had to shovel out the bottom of the drive and 3 more inches and conducted a final shoveling around 11 p.m. I broke a decent sweat on every trip outside. I love that lake-effect stuff.

Run duration: 32 minutes. Shoveling duration: 60 minutes
Training Heart Rate: 140 bpm running, 100 shoveling.
Calories burned during workout: 545 running, 600 shoveling.