Another day in the hotel fitness center. Basically just trying to maintain some aerobic base.

Started at 5mph and 5% grade and then reduced the grade by 1% at each 10′ mark to keep my HR in the low UT1 zone.

I opened the windows in the fitness center so that it was much cooler and more comfortable today.

Nothing too taxing, but it was HOT in the tiny fitness center.

For the treadmill, I set it up for a slow climb (5mph, 5% grade).  around the 20 minute mark, my HR started to push past 145, so I dropped the incline to 2.5%, then back to 3% for the rest of the 30 minutes.  After that, I took a couple minutes and set myself up on the cross trainer.  I did a random program which seemed to just slowly ramp up the intensity over the 30 minutes.

I have to admit I felt a lot better this morning than I have in a couple weeks, so maybe I am finally shaking this bug.

Now I’m in Milan at the Hotel “For You”.  Pitiful little fitness center in the basement. 2 treadmills and a recumbent station bike (which was broken).  I was hoping to avoid running today, but I very much wanted to work off some of last night’s dinner.

So, 60 minutes on the treadmill doing a gentle hill profile from 0% to 6% grade and from 7.5km/h to 10km/h.

I was having a bit of trouble keeping my HR strap in place.  That’s what the blue bit is about.

Still travelling.  Stuck in the hotel fitness center.

Today was short interval day. I experimented with doing them on the treadmill. The machine had a setting that enabled you to toggle between 2 speeds with button on the touch screen. I set it up on a 5 degree incline, with the slow at 4mph and the fast at 7 mph. Then I manually timed 2 minute intervals and 1 minute rests.

The plot shows a false start, where I tried to do 8mph as the fast, but it was too much for me, so I reset the machine. Then once I got going, for no reason at all, the treadmill crashed and rebooted after 7 intervals. That is the longer rest between the 7th and 8th interval. I reset for another 24 minutes (8 intervals). By the end I was really feeling the effects.

It was a pretty intense workout. The rests were quite short. But, then again, so were the intervals.

Tomorrow: During the day, I am heading by car up to Stuttgart, having some meetings there, and then flying in the evening to Milan. I’m not sure what facilities the hotel will have. In any case, it will be some kind of recovery session.

I’m currently in Munich on business.  In the hotel, the machines in the fitness center are from a company called LifeFitness. There is a stationary bike, a couple of treadmills and a couple of elliptical machines. They all have a cool virtual reality feature. They have the ability to select courses.

I did this yesterday and had a lovely run through Aukland, New Zealand, and then ellipticalled through Yosemite. Today, I rode my bike through Paris and Reims, and then ellipticalled through the Sierra Nevada. On the treadmill, the intensity was good because you could pick your pace and average incline. On the elliptical and the stationary bike it seems that the level settings are a bit too easy. I kept increasing the level, but then the machine would reset it back down at every “scene” transition. It’s a real pity because I was really enjoying the scenery, I would have liked to have gotten a better workout while doing it.

At any rate, it was 70′ of base work, more useful than sitting around and surfing the web.

Tomorrow: I think I will do some interval work on the treadmill. Not sure how well that will go, but I’ll give it a try. Maybe a 8×500 if I can figure out how to program the machine to do that.