Happy New Year

Happy New Year, etc. I'd like to brag a little about a recent visit to the gym. 20 minutes on the elliptical at 370 calories, including warmup-- thats 1100 cal/hour, which was my pre-surgery lactate threshold. I was pretty worn out afterwards, but happy, in a sort of geeky way. I followed it with 5 minutes of stair climbing. I'm going to try to do some more stair climbing to mix things up and work the hip muscles a little more. The elliptical is great for cardio, but I don't think I'm getting a huge benefit for my hip muscles.

Today I got the tandem bike ready and hooked the trailer to it so our son Banjo can ride with me and Christina-- it's a human powered family vehicle. We did 4 miles total and had brunch. We hadn't ridden the tandem in 2 years because of the Baby Hole. It was fun, but cold. Banjo fell asleep. The hip felt OK, but occasionally I feel it move forward (or something) and it hurts in the front, a sort of hip flexorish pain. We'll plan on more rides, and work on extending the range that Banjo and my hip can tolerate.

I'm going to give the 3x elliptical, 2x long walk another try this week, my third attempt. Heading into Wed, things are looking/feeling good.

Wed update: did 20 minutes on the elliptical at 355 calories. 370 calories seems impossible without cheating somehow....dang... then I did 6 minutes on the stair climber. Felt good, but the real test is how I will feel the next morning. Someone at the gym noticed that I'm no longer on crutches, and I realized that I was pretty lame just 4 weeks ago-- that made me feel better, even though bragging about my elliptical workouts is pretty incredibly "lame".

I should mention that I somehow gained 5 pounds in the last month or so. I'm holding our Jersey trip mostly responsible. When we lived there I was significantly heavier-- must be the 9 months of winter. I'm going to try to lose the weight over the next month or so.

Thurs update: woke up and the hip felt great. Did a 20 minute walk and it went well. I'm still on track for the week.

Fri update: Did 22 minutes on the elliptical and 7 minutes on the stairs...hip still feels good, and it looks like I made it through the week. I'll try the 3x/2x again next week before cranking up the difficulty, but this is a decent base of fitness to fall back on. A base of fitness-- been thinking about this. I haven't been very patient in the past with building a good one. Gonna try to build a strong base this time.