Experiments in the Slow Lane - MAF, Moose and I Hit the Woods

I've started my flirtation with the MAF/low heart rate training I mentioned last time.  I don't know if it's going to be a magic bullet, but it does seem like a very nice step off my roller coaster of get injured/go hard/get injured.  And the leg that I think is slightly wonky feels totally fine when tooling around with my heart rate monitor on.  My MAF zone is 124-134.  yes, that's low.  Which means that it's slow, and theoretically, as someone who likes to work hard,  I should hate this. But you know what - I don't.  At least not yet.  So far I just toodle around, smell the roses and enjoy the idea that I'm hopefully gaining some aerobic strength, but at least I'm not hurting myself.  And I think the reason this works for people is that you're going at a low effort, so you can go long - I don't think anyone ever got a fabulous aerobic system by running in their MAF zone for 20 miles a week.  And maybe I'll get there, which would be novel and interesting and fun, for the time being I'm just toodling happily along for a bit and then calling it a day.

Among other things, it gives me a good excuse to take Moose out in the woods and play.  And take pictures of the frozen creek.  And hike up the big hills while still in my heart rate zone!  I am WALKING, and playing with the dog, and still in my heart rate zone?  Ok, I'll take it.

One fly in the ointment - Maffetone reallllly doesn't like anything anaerobic during the aerobic phase, and he includes any sort of body weight training in his definition.  Which means Chisel would definitely not work for him.

Brooke took this picture of me at Chisel a couple of weeks ago.  I think mainly to document my awesome purple pants.  $20 on sale at Target.  Eat your heart out Lululemon.

And the lower leg has felt sort of iffy after Chisel the last couple of times, so maybe I'll take a small Chisel hiatus.  He's fine with regular Pilates though, which is good because no way am I giving that up, so maybe I'll just add an extra mat class instead.

But today, I actually haven't done much of anything, because we're on an unexpected snow day.  Here's the family walk we took earlier.

Unexpected snow days - doesn't get much better than that.

Happy Saturday

Pretty great Saturday around here.  Started with. . . Chisel.  I'm a creature of habit, and my Saturdays almost always start with Chisel.  I was smart this time, though, and swore off anything that made my SI joint open up (at least that's how I think of it.)  So, no fire hydrant-ish stuff, no hurdleish stuff. But still a lot of other stuff.  Here we are in all of our sweaty glory.

Want a fun workout in AVL?  That will leave you unable to sit the first 2 or 14 times you do it?  I'll hook you up.

And then while I walked home I took some pictures of street art in downtown Asheville.

And then I was all, "oh right, I have a ton of work to do!"  And I sanded a bunch of bangles I poured yesterday - in fact here's the group right before I poured:

But then, instead of continuing my diligent work-ish ways, we picked Sam up from a friend's house where he spent the night, and then I played with my Facebook Ads (which I seriously think I'm about to figure out!  Joy! Or at least satisfaction!), and then I went to the mall (I know, WTF?), and then I went and picked up Moose from *his* play date, and then it was 7 pm and we ate dinner and watched Breaking Bad, and now it's now and I never got any more work done.  Oops.  But it is Saturday, so I guess I'll let it go.

I'll leave you with Moose and his sister (host of his play date.)

Moose (L) and his sister Betty Grable (R.)  They're from the same litter, and Betty lives with my Dad.  They meet up for play dates on a regular basis, and carouse around like maniacs.  They love each other.