A Test

The treadmills were not available this morning, so I went forward with my test on the "Hills" setting of the elliptical machine.  I entered my age and weight so I could let the machine translate my heart rate into categories (warm up / fat burn / cardio / high peak), I set the monitors to show time elapsed, and I kept my eye on the mileage.

So, the results? I did 3.1 miles in 29:10 - staying in "cardio" heart range the entire time, except where I pushed myself to "high peak" (heavy breathing ensued, ugh - but at least now I know that's the tell-tale symptom of "high peak").  So in theory I could do a 5 k race now.  Although the uncontrolled conditions of an actual race make me shudder.  And how would I push myself without all the numbers?  I averaged a little under a 10-minute mile over the entire 40 minutes, but was actually fastest in the second mile.

I did participate in a 5k race once, when we were in NJ.  As I recall, the result was not good - I either felt really sick at the end of it, or got cramped, or something like that.  I don't recall if I finished the race or not, but I'm pretty sure I got a t-shirt.  I assume this was during my final year of high school, when I was in fact running fairly regularly outdoors (but never racing).