Bio-feedback trial

who says HRM's are just for sports? not me! for those of you following along, today was the day that I had to give a presentation for the Vermont Council on Quality's Healthcare Reform Summit. My topic was EMR, or Electronic Medical Record. Blah blah blah, bits, bytes, ones, zeros, and a whole buncha security and privacy built in. In short, it is the wave of the future, and the company that I work for is waaaaaay ahead on this one. whew.
but that isn't the real reason for this post. blah blah healthcare. what you all came to my blog for today was to see if i actually survived. well, yes, i did. someday i might go into detail about why i was so on edge about the whole thing. suffice to say it had nothing to do with my speech, or her speech.
i wore my chest strap for my garmin, but didn't wear the wristband part. I just carried it and then placed it on the table near me. so? i dunno why i told you all that. really doesn't matter.
so she (let's just call her "steph" for now, ok?) spoke two people before me. I had arrived at the venue VERY early, because i really didn't know what the heck i was doing, and ended up killing some time going for a walk and then warming up in a Barnes and Noble. yay, books! i went back to the hotel around 10 since the agenda said that there was a break scheduled at 1015, and steph was to start at 1030. they of course were running behind, so i sat in a chair in the hall and waited. Here i am, waiting....look closely at the tie.....yep, that's Darth.

As I sat, i noticed movement to my right. what could it be? mouse? caterer asking me to sample some truffles? nope. it was steph, headed to the powder room. i looked her way but tried not to look like i was sizing her up, because i wasn't. she half-assed waved at me and said, "hi, Gene." I said, "hey, steph, how are you?" she said that she was good, and then disappeared. when she came out, she didn't even glance in my direction. win.
when the break finally happened, i took a spot in the back row and waited for her to speak. her presentation was average, nothing really to write home about, but no complaints, either. she did well crunching all of her info into the compressed time slot. she made good eye contact with almost everyone in the room, but never really looked in my specific corner of the room. win.
the next presenter(s) were ones that i really wanted to hear. their topic was about creating the 'gold standard' with an employee wellness program. we have one at our facility, but honestly it is on life support and in need of some intervention. their show was good, but i didn't really learn much. oh well. after they were done, steph and her 2 coworkers booked it out of there as if their car was being towed. just as well.
i introduced myself to the Dr. who was following me. nice guy, young, fit-looking. he noticed Teri. i said that it was my Garmin, and that i was wearing an HRM as part of a biofeedback experiment that i was doing. he loved the idea. i didn't explain to him WHY i was doing it. he asked what my rate was at the time, and i said that it was 86. He said, "that's pretty good for someone about to give a speech to a room full of strangers."
win.
so here is the data.....what do you think? i think that i might wear it to sleep some night(s) to get a better sense of my perception of sleep time versus what my body actually does. i mean, otherwise, Teri just sits there on my cedar chest (not my hairy chest, my cedar chest. but i digress. often. here are the numbers:

not nearly as dramatic as i thought that it would be. this was a fun experiment!

DM Intervals

Yesterday i wanted to run. badly. the weather wasn't cooperating, so of course it was the dreadmill. i am learning to embrace, to LOVE the dreadmill. to OWN it, to rock it, to be ONE with the Dreadmill.... sure.

I wanted to do intervals. I have an interval program from AudioFuel, specifically this one. I have done it on pavement, but never on my new BFF, the treadmill. Not to be discouraged, I hopped on the bad boy and cranked up the volume.
Aside: Do people try to talk to you when you are wearing headphones? WHY???
I must say that I was not disappointed. Not long into the workout i was sweating almost as much as a long-tailed cat at a rocking chair convention!
People around me were giving me strange looks. Might have been because I would be cruising along at 150bpm and then suddenly (to them, but to me I had a count down!) shoot up to 170 or 180bpm. Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa~ It might have had something to do with the discharge of CH4 coming from my a.. somewhere right behind me. I dunno.
Aside: WTF, BLOGGER??? I had a paragraph, then a picture, and then a plea for advice....AND YOU LOST MY WORK~~! Just another item to add to the growing list of reasons why i feel that i should either a)move to wordpress or b) get my own domain. How hard could either one be, right? Thing is, my top two domain name choices have been taken. Huh? really? yep.....

Ok, so when i got on the TM, I wore Teri. Remember Teri? We've run around a bit together over the past year or so. When I took her out of my gym bag (don't judge me!) she copped an attitude right away, "Ummm...this doesn't seem right to me. What are we doing here?" "What are you talking about?", I asked. She sat there silently, her little bar desperately trying to fill, until finally she just said, "Are you indoors?" I clicked on the "yes" option and wedged her red little body between the console and a washcloth so she wouldn't rattle and bother the other people present. She's been good to me so far, so i guess i can't complain.
Shhh....she has NO IDEA what is in store for next year. I wanted to know how my HR did during the sprints and recovery periods. See below, and you'll know, too:
Aside: Save now. Click it. Click it!

See that? My heart rate just kept going up and up. Never really gave myself time to fully 'recover' in between efforts. I ask you: Is that bad? Should I be getting closer to 130 (or lower??) before I ramp the speed back up? Seriously. I need some advice. I felt really good during the run, and at no time did i feel like i couldn't go on. I think I had the machine up to 8mph for the last sprint, which is where you see my HR maxed out.

In other news, Thursday (today?) is the big day. I have to give that presentation that I mentioned a few posts back. Yep. So i am certain that I'll have some stuff to write on Friday......

Thanks for stopping by. If you live where there is usually snow but there ISN'T snow yet, and you are jonesing for some....check out Neil's recent blog posts. Good humor, great photos (not ALL of snow).