Day 75: biking break continues

While reading some fitness tips online, I stumbled across something that endorsed biking as the best cardio exercise. I find that I feel much better about myself after a romp at the gym rather than just biking.

When I'm biking, I sweat a lot - which is good. I'm sure I burn a lot of calories. I keep my heart rate up and I put a lot of effort into challenging myself by tackling somewhat difficult courses. But the feeling I get after an hour on the bike can't even compare to the way I feel after an hour at the gym. And after my three day hiatus, I honestly don't miss biking. I think I have come to equate it with recreation rather than fitness. I enjoy biking. I think it's fun. When I'm at the gym, I am more definitely focused on working out and getting a good workout.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I'm engaging more parts of my body. There are six skill-related components of physical fitness:
1) Agility
2) Coordination
3) Power
4) Balance
5) Reaction time
6) Speed
and five health related components:
1) Body composition
2) Cardiovascular fitness
3) Flexibility
4) Muscular endurance
5) Strength

When I'm biking, I work on agility, coordination, power, balance, reaction time, speed, cardiovascular fitness, muscular endurance and strength - however, I'm only really working out one part of my body. When I'm at the gym, I'm able to hit all of these targets, but I am working my arms and legs and everything in between.

As per usual, I started off with stretching and weights.

When I started the upright bike today, I decided to use one of the pre-programmed courses, weight loss. The course is set up to have a really low resistance and then rocket to a high resistance and then back up and down. The machine kept pausing the program and the words "slow down" would flash across the screen. I didn't even feel like I was going fast! I tried to slow down, but about a mile into the course, the program just ended. It was weird. I ended up doing one more mile at a resistance of 6. Then I did one mile on the stationary bike. This time, I was able to go at my own speed.

Man, I really hated the treadmill today. I grabbed two 3-lb weights and used them, alternating exercises and arms, whenever I walked in between my jogging. I did the same course I've been doing for the last few days: walk .2, run .1, walk .1, run .1 etc for 1 mile. I felt realllly tired today. It was a struggle to do any running. I just felt drained.

After that, I did one mile on the elliptical and then went back to the upright bike and did one mile. I finished off the workout with the side-ab work out. And let me tell you, my side abs are definitely feeling it now!

Overall, a good workout :)
***

Food for thought:

Breakfast: 100 calorie yoplait yogurt. One cup of green tea.
Lunch: leftover chicken/spinach/tomato/onion/parsley/scallion/pecan salad w/ raspberry vinaigrette. One piece of herb focaccia bread.
Dinner: leftover salad (see above). One cup of cajun trail mix. 4 mini chocolate chip cookies (curse you, delicious cookies!) 22 oz. of water.

It seems boring that I should eat the same thing for lunch and dinner, but let me assure you that it is SO good, I don't care!