Today’s Start Walking blog:
Thursday, 24 August 2006: Rowing
I can feel it in my arms & shoulders: I went to the gym I lately joined, & did 25 minutes of rowing. Not in a real shell, of course, but on a rowing machine — I wanted to try rowing because #1 I rowed dorm crew in college one semester & really liked it & #2 I’d read a couple of things about its value as a cardio exercise because it works more areas of the body than anything else except maybe cross country skiing & swimming. I did enough research to learn it could also be used for interval training, though the technique seems to differ a little from how intervals are done with walking/running or with biking (whether on the street or on machines). At any rate, its given a pleasant “I’ve been working out” ache to my shoulders & arms… wonder how I’ll feel tomorrow?
I had my heart rate monitor on & tried doing it in an interval-training kinda way: slower for a couple of minutes, then picking up my pace (& heart rate) for one minute, then going back to the “recovery/rest” level again, & so on through about 20 minutes of the workout (the rest went to warm-up). I have no idea how fast I was rowing, but I calculated the conversion for steps walked by the more conservative rate (3.5 miles per hour) as I rather doubt I was at 12 mph. That converts to 147 steps per minute rowing, for an equivalent of 3,675 steps.
Otherwise, a fairly normal day, with the requisite bus stop & cross-campus walks, plus a lot of walking through Fred Meyers to pick up some shorts for working out in & a padlock for a locker at the gym, & the walk home afterward. Somehow that led me to actually doing over 10,000 steps just in walking, so I had a pretty good exercise total for the day.
Day total: 13,775 steps (or equivalent)
