And now for something a little different

I'm not sick. No, really. Well, maybe just a little. But it's weird. I've got the post cold coughing and hacking. But I didn't have a cold or flu. But my windpipe has felt kind of raw the last couple of days and I decided that adding a chlorinated water/air mixture wouldn't do it any good, so I've skipped my last two swims.

You know how easy yoga looks? You see the instructor or demonstrator doing a pose, and you wonder why everybody thinks yoga is hard. Till you try it. Then you wobble all over the place. You can't breathe. The instructor snickers under her breath when she looks at you. Well, no maybe she doesn't, but she wants to. Then she helps you.

I did not want a hard workout on the bike. I wanted to stay solid zone 2, and try to get the sludge I call blood moving. My heart rate wasn't bad for the pedal effort, but my breathing was way up. If I was estimating my heart rate, I'd have added 15- 20 bpm. At least. Which reminds me. I had a dentist appointment this morning. No icky stuff, just cleaning and scaling, and my hygienist is a dream come true. But they got a blood pressure machine in the office. So I sit down, she wraps me in the cuff, and a few seconds later we see 120 over 80, which is way high for me, and a heart rate of 54.

So as I got on my bike today, I was thinking of yoga. And I was wondering what I could do that wouldn't be too hard. After a slow warm up, I got the idea of spinning done as a yoga pose. I tried to imagine myself as a tree growing out of the bike, feeling solid on the seat and handlebars, with my legs going around and around. I put a lot of mental effort into this, trying to keep my upper body still but not rigid, and my feet light on the pedals going in perfect circles. I could only do this for 5 to 7 minutes at a time. Total time on the bike was 1 hr.

In between, I worked on my elbow, trying to rotate my arm with the elbow tucked in, rather than pointing out. I was also thinking about my positioning on the bike, how my arms felt, and where my knees were in relation to my elbows. I'm thinking I might need to make some tweaks to the saddle position. It feels like my body wants to fall forward off it, and my sit bones slide off the front edge. Our fancy digital camera can take short movie clips. I'm thinking about riding by slowly while someone snaps some pictures, and takes some video. The only problem is that Linda isn't very good with the camera. hmmmmm.

Essentially, while doing my yoga on the bike, I was in low zone 2, trying to spin evenly at 85 to 90 rpm. Even at this low level of effort I was breathing pretty hard. From there, I did some stretching and went for a short run. Shorter than planned. I for sure wanted to keep it in zone 2, and I knew it would be slow. When I'm feeling good, I can almost walk at the speed I 'ran' today. That was 20 minutes, and it was brutal. After the smooth spinning, it felt like I was running with a chord cut across my wheels. Step clunk, step clunk. Lots of little niggelies here and there, in places I don't normally get them. I took the hint and cut it short from the planned 40 minute run. Pity. It's warm enough to run in shorts and a t shirt.

Stretched for about 20 minutes afterward. Lots of creaky bits. This deep coughing isn't doing any of my chest or back muscles any good. It's nice that tomorrow is my rest day.

Update: The rack of lamb I BBQ'd for supper was wonderful! Tender, juicy, perfectly done. Plus wine, (duh!) salad, spuds. Maybe some desert later. Life is good.