Sometimes things don't go how they're supposed to

Saturday, February 27, 2010

The forecast was calling for another 1-2 inches of snow overnight, but someone forgot to tell Highland Heights. I went out to another 6 inches and more importantly for the workout, two feet of heavy stuff pushed into the bottom of the driveway by the street plows. I think I need to quick flipping off the plow guys and yelling “could you leave anymore snow in my driveway?”

They’ve been trying.

I shoveled for an hour – pacing myself for the rest of the day’s workout. Holly – that’s my wife of 34 years, and I had scheduled a hike in the park for around 2 p.m., after which I planned to put an hour on the bike. Since I was below 200 pounds, I wanted to make sure to stay there and figured a big workout day was in order. I’ve been doing some form of cardiovascular workout for the last seven days and that would normally mean a day off, but things aren’t normal right now.
Two p.m. came and went. With Holly, setting times to do something or be somewhere is just like saying to someone “how are you?” You don’t really want to know and it doesn’t really mean anything. I stayed at the computer and working on blogs.

About 5 p.m., I began to get concerned. I knew we had to get in the hike and I had to go pick up my daughter in Kent around 8 p.m. The way things were shaping up, I was not going to get in my ride unless I did it around 10 p.m., which was pretty much my bed time.

We finally made it to the park, but it was almost dark and there would be no off-trail hiking and high calorie burning. Our paces are a little different too and so I wasn’t getting in the higher heart rate. No big deal. This was supposed to be an off day anyway and I was still planning on doing the bike later. The park was like a winter wonderland with all of the trees bending under the weight of the latest, wet six inches. We had the place pretty much to ourselves and the going was reasonably tough because of the new fall. Holly found the going tough and considered the hike a very good workout.

By the time I had taken her home, retrieved my daughter from Kent and eaten dinner, it was 10 p.m. and I was not in the mood to climb on the trainer. I decided that shoveling and the hike would be it for the day’s workout, which was probably a good thing. Tomorrow was a run day and I had plans to back it up with time on the trainer. Still – for an off day, I’d burned 960 calories.

Shovel duration: 60 minutes. Hike duration: 60 minutes.

Training Heart Rate: 100 bpm for shoveling. 75 bpm for hike.

Calories burned during workout: 600 shoveling. 360 hiking.