elliptical intervals

OK, I can't racewalk yet. But what's to stop me from a hard interval workout? Nothing! I have the elliptical at my disposal, and I can do it! I decided just to do 8x2' hard with 2' recovery in between each. I would have done more intervals, but I wanted to be cautious as I didn't know how it would make my shin feel. It didn't hurt at all while doing it (or I would have stopped), but I'm waiting until later in the day to see how it feels before I decide if I can do again. I think it's gonna be OK though! Anyway, it felt GREAT to do an interval workout. I uploaded it to the Garmin website so you can see my heart rate - nice peaks, and you can see I was working fairly hard; at the end my HR got up to 167, about like during a regular track workout. Jim said there isn't much I can do to keep my racewalking fitness. But I figured that my cardiovascular fitness could be improved with this type of workout vs. just keeping a slow steady pace on the machine. It can't hurt, and it will probably help, so I'm going to do some more of these for sure.

I'm hoping to do spinning on Monday morning (hmmm...wonder if they'll have the class since it's Memorial Day?) but if it hurts too much or there is no class, I'll do a longer elliptical interval workout, assuming this one doesn't make my leg hurt later in the day.

Garmin connect data here.

Oh, and I did 8.25 miles in 1 hour. Jim was saying that he was going to beat me up to the top of Observation Point in Zion National Park when he comes here in June. I don't think so! I'm staying fit, thank you very much, and I am going to hike that darn thing and hike it well :)!

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Injury update: I think the boot is helping. My leg is not sore at ALL now when dorsiflexing (pulling toes up). That's a HUGE improvement. In addition, my leg isn't really sore any more when I press on the shin. Previously it was excruciatingly tender, like I had a bad bruise, and it was quite swollen. It doesn't seem so swollen or tender any more. Yay! Another week and it might be time to try some easy racewalking...maybe...I will be very cautious, though. Any recurrence will only set me back at this point. I'll discuss it with Jim and see what he recommends.