How I Really Feel About It

After much kind nudging, I finally got my hands on my very own heart rate monitor—the Nike Imara. My understanding of the piece of equipment and my aerobic/anaerobic levels is a little lacking at the moment, but I anticipate being better prepared to chat about these things on the other side of this weekend.

But I was so eager to play with the HRM that I strapped on the sensor last night to measure my resting heart rate (55-65 bpm) and discovered how I really feel about work.

From a resting state, I checked my work email and found that just opening Outlook made my HR jump to the 65-75 range, and opening a message from my boss pushed it to 75-85. So, I took my test a little further. I maintained a resting heart rate for the drive to work, but found that it jumped to 90-95 the second I walked through the door and peaked at 125 when a series of others’ bad planning and decisions disrupted the flow of my day-before-vacation.

That was when I stopped with the HRM. I had learned enough.

Unfortunately, I missed lunch again and was exhausted with a stress headache by the time I came home. I was (this) close to wimping out after a 6 p.m. nap, but felt motivated to play with my HRM the way it was meant to be used!

It was just a relaxing 2.25-mile run in my immediate neighborhood, but it was the first time (since I started branching outside my neighborhood) that running that distance was actually relaxing to me. Until recently, two miles was a distance run for me! There are several grades on my street that I used to call “hills” that barely phased me this evening. I love the feeling of breezy running and undeniable improvement.

While I did use my HRM during the run, I’m not sure how to gauge my results and will have to complete my reading materials to know what I’m looking for when I’m running and how to get better. Between the HRM and my Nike+iPod, I not only feel like a Nike product slinger, but a little bit like RoboCop too.