Thursday, February 16, 2006

Motivation to piss off my kitty

I received a Polar F11 Heart Rate Monitor Watch for my birthday from Tony. It's a really great gift because it's something I might not ever have considered buying for myself, but now that I have it,I absolutely love using it.

Retailing at around $150, it's not just a simple heart beat counter. It measures fitness level and then creates a customized workout program that tells me how long to exercise each week at what heart rate levels. Then when I actually go out to exercise, it lets me continually know whether I am in my exercise heart rate zone, exercise time goal for the session, how many calories burned, and how long I've exercised. It also makes me take a warm up and cool down period before and after exercising. This watch is more powerful than some computers I've owned (in the distant past). I love gadgets.

It's hugely motivating, because I'm constantly getting feedback and know that my exercise is actually accomplishing something. It's also gotten me motivated to exercise longer per session because the shortest amount of time my customized workout program recommends is one hour. I really want to make this watch happy so It'll display a little trophy symbol at the end of each week. Oh, that and tell me that my fitness level has gone up.

I wish Tony's schedule gave him time to be my workout buddy, but he's seldom home in time to take advantage of sunlight after work. Therefore, I've been coercing my 1.5 year old Siamese cat, Callie, to come with. Callie learned how to wear a harness and leash as a kitten, but he's not quite up to 1 hour walks. Therefore I have a frontpack for him to ride in. He gets to walk on leash during the cool down part of my exercise.

Doesn't he look thrilled?

Meanwhile, I received word from one of my readers that comments weren't working in certain browsers. I hope I've fixed that by changing to a more standard template. Please let me know if you encounter any errors.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

..although moto camping brought me to your blog, I enjoyed reading about your kitty..glad all is well..BTW..cool blog..