Gym Three - Return of the Treadmill

Early morning exercise, what could be better for me - well apart from a long lie-in with my wife, a big fry-up and an afternoon long trip to the pub?

Today's trip had novelty value as I took my 2 year old son swimming for 45 minutes while my wife did her work out. When it was my turn, while they swam, I then hit the treadmill HARD! Six minutes of running at 10Km/h which is a 20% increase in duration but not speed. Came off there feeling very light headed which I attributed to lack of sleep last night and straight on to the cross trainer.

Now cross trainers are supposed to be low impact, high repetition exercise machines. For those that are unfamiliar with them, imagine standing on a pairs of skis, with a ski pole in each hand and moving your arms and legs like Spotty Dog from The Woodentops (60's reference for you kids out there!). I guess no one told my cross trainer that it was supposed to be easy to exercise on one of them. I found this morning hard going but I did increase the duration of the exercise to 11 minutes (at level 11/25) , a 10% increase on last time, result average heart rate 150bpm and just two slow downs for reaching maximum heart rate (one less than last time out).

Then it was time for the bike. I started reasonably steady at 80 revolutions a minute (at level 5/25) which took my heart up to 153bpm and it stayed there for nearly the whole of the 11 minutes I was on the bike (another 10% in duration!). By this stage I was considering taking a walk and meeting my wife (who was now swimming with mys on/sitting in the cafe) but I knew I would only be cheating myself, so I headed for the rowing machine.

I lasted 1m45s on the rowing machine before attacking the demon treadmill again. In the build to the fitness test in March next year I managed 1m45s again but might have made it to 2m if I'd really pushed. Alternatively I could have ended up in casualty!