Still here

Workouts ---

Sunday: rest day

Monday: Spinning with Jen, 1 hr class, nice and hard. It was a steady state workout, but I pushed it because I was in the mood for a good hard workout.

Tuesday: Spinning with Miguel, 1 hr class, amusing! Miguel has the largest collection of very very bad 60s and 70s covers that I have ever heard. They were so bad that they made me laugh. His class was also rather, um, interesting. He liked to spin very, very, very fast (i.e. he was going at probably 110rpm much of the class) in very low gears. Either that, or max the gear out climbing. I aimed for somewhere in between and actually got a great workout. He was a pretty funny guy, and I think he's the regular sub for spinning at the gym. People seemed to know him, at least.

Today: Spinning with Jen, 90 min class, but I got there 5 min late and the class was more like 85 min, so it wasn't quite that long. She had us do a good steady-state workout; the main set was 7 minute chunks divided into hard climb at 60-70 rpm and flat road at 100 rpm with 10-sec accelerations every minute on the flat road. The first one was 1 min climb, 6 min flat road; then 2 min climb, 5 min flat road - etc. until 7 min climb, then 7 min flat road. I tried to keep my heart rate low to mid 140s for the workout, like I would racewalking on an easy day. That worked out well.

***

Mood and other things: I'm definitely moderately depressed again. Sigh. It's not too awful, but it's certainly not the best. As a result, I'm continuing to struggle with my food intake, and am just feeling really tired all the time. The exercise is probably the only thing keeping me from feeling worse. I know I have a bit of seasonal affective disorder, so I got out my light again and am giving that a go. It's probably only natural to feel a bit down, as 1) it's winter (and has been bitterly cold the past couple days, setting off my Raynaud's phenomenon), 2) my toe still hurts and I still can't racewalk (though actually the toe is gradually improving - still hurts to put on socks, but not as much; still hurts to walk, but not as much), 3) work has been busy and family has been busy, making me more tired than usual.

Thankfully, I will have a 4-day weekend and will not have to come in to work at all, which I sorely need right now. In addition, the family obligations have tapered off. I'm glad, because I feel I just need to be at home reading and sleeping and just trying to recuperate.