Maybe It Works

Last night I set the Sleep Melodies app to a full hour of pleasant sounds. Each component is separately adjustable for volume so I can get the exact amount of peepers trilling with a background of heavy snowfall interlaced with trancing duduk music. I also turned on the Sleep Cycle app just to see what it would determine. I know I fell asleep before the full hour because I have no memory of it ending. Tonight I might add the low, guttural throat chanting of monks and replace the snowfall with rainfall. (My husband likes to listen to the Calm app bedtime stories, especially one spoken by LeVar Burton. You know, Geordi LaForge in Star Trek: The Next Generation. He claims that puts him right to sleep. No doubt. I just find the $70 annual subscription a bit pricey!)

The Sleep Cycle app recorded the hour of sounds as me being awake, yet it claims that I achieved 83% sleep quality (whatever that truly means) in spite of only 5.5 hours asleep. I was in bed for nearly 7 hours. I'm pretty sure I slept closer to 6.5 hours but it's impossible to tell when both apps reside on my phone! That doesn't mean I woke up refreshed. I'm always staggering out of bed like a drunk in the dark because the sun isn't quite up yet.

I'm always cold when I first enter the gym, so I pull my hood up and focus on getting my heart rate at a reasonable pace. I really dislike Program 1 on the elliptical, mostly because my left inner knee hurts a bit as I pedal, especially at the lowest incline levels. Once the program creates a few hills to ascend, my knee feels better. Pedaling backward also feels better. Cage Stretch, pull-ups and core exercises are routine with no surprises. I am surprised that I have the Aerobic Room all to myself. Usually, there's at least one other person here but not today, perhaps because it's a long weekend. Well, not for most of the working world, but there's no school Monday or Tuesday due to the Jewish New Year.

I'm able to use the Step Mill for 20 minutes, another set of pull-ups and then I look around for something else to do... reluctantly, I settle on the Octane. Next time I might adjust the horizontal motion narrower but today I leave it on the default setting of 5 which is midway. The Octane reads 72 as my lowest pulse rate and a whopping 225 for my highest. However, it tells me my average HR is 120. I guess my HR might actually be that erratic. But I'm not sure I'd tell my doctor. Every year at my annual, I get an EKG and everything reads normal. Once you tell a doc there's something weird, they run a million tests and then either restrict your movements, put you on drugs you don't want to be on, or tell you they have no idea what's going on. (BTW, I did finally schedule an appointment to have that biopsy done on my toe. That's a few weeks away.)

My dad got diagnosed with an enlarged heart (probably from years of uncontrolled anger and his hair-trigger rage) and an erratic heartbeat. The doc made him quit practicing martial arts and put him on Coumadin, a blood thinner (aka warfarin -- rat poison), to prevent strokes. I'm pretty sure he died from a Coumadin overdose and not any heart disease, but since he was "elderly," the coroner declined to go any further than "death by natural causes."

I'm not ready to do my last set of pull-ups yet. Procrastination means doing Walking Lunges and then the 2:1 Seated Leg Curls. The weights on this machine are in 15 lb increments, so if I want to adjust the weight more minutely, I have to grab the 5 lb blocks specially shaped with cutouts to sit on top of the weight stack. I'm actually surprised that I can get reps at 40 lbs without my right hamstring going into spasms, although there were warning twinges. Maybe next time!

Lion's Mane mushrooms

I still need to be able to walk around tomorrow, as we have been planning to attend the Garlic Festival in Saugerties NY. It's where we discovered Lion's Mane mushrooms for sale. Sauteed in butter, it has a taste and texture vaguely reminiscent of lobster. For my husband's birthday in August, I ordered a Lion's Mane mushroom growing kit from Amazon. It's basically a log seeded with mushroom spores in a plastic bag. A second outer bag must be misted several times a day to create the proper humidity. Last week I finally started to see what looks like baby Lion's Manes. Maybe in another few weeks, we'll be harvesting our own.

Our baby shrooms

Long Weekend Cardio Friday

30 min elliptical + 5cd
Program 1
Miles 2.89
Calories 324
HR 154-202 (86)

Cage Stretch
HGPU 20

Elbow Plank 60s
Crunches 60/60
Leg horizontal scissors 60
Bicycles 60
Side Planks 2 x 60s
Bird Dogs 2 x 60s

20 Step Mill
Level 3
Calories 112
Total steps 702
Floors 43
HR 132

HGPU 21

15 Octane + 2 cd
Level 1 Manual
Calories 107
Miles 1.48
HR 72-130 average 120 / max 225

Walking Lunges
29+29=58

2:1 Seated Leg Curls
15lbs x 15
30 x 12
35 x 12
40 x 12

HGPU 20

Mat Stretch