Heart Rate

Some have said that I am cold-hearted. I have to admit that I'm not the most emotional of people. Not to say that I'm emotionless, I just choose to have my emotional meltdowns in my own privacy or in the company of select few. It goes back to my childhood taunting of peers and that I would be weak. (Anyway...digressing...)

I'm not a doctor or a rocket scientist, but I do know that emotional weakness err expression has nothing to do with a heart rate. But I have to wonder if there is some correlation of the two.

See while on vacation in the Riviera Maya last week, I hit the gym several times. I've mentioned before that I can be somewhat freakish (err OCD) about my workouts. I tend to push myself much harder than I should hoping for ultimate results and yet never really attaining any, not by my standards at least. I do manage to perspire (a lot) and I feel better, but I don't look better and the scale doesn't show results either. Anyway...JN and I were at the gym...

I did half an hour on the exercise bike, which reflected that I did over 12 miles during that time. Made me think that really it wasn't miles, but anyway...I wasn't short of breath, but I and my bath towel (it really was a bath towel - were damp). We had done water aerobics in the morning and managed to walk around the resort, a few miles, so I wasn't really interested in much more after the bike. JN on the other hand had bounced around machines and had settled on the treadmill where she wanted to work out another ten minutes or so. Knowing my despise for the treadmill, but inability to stand around another ten minutes, I got on the treadmill next to her. My despise for the treadmill comes from my desire to walk outside or choose other machines that are less demanding on my knees and get a better caloric burn.

Anyway...I decide to do the "Fat Burn" setting for ten minutes. I enter in all of my information (just shy of my social security number) and off I am walking. Within a minute or so I'm asked to check my heart rate. I place my hands on the heart rate monitor grasps and the result...60. The treadmill begins to incline. Another minute or so later, I give my heart rate yet again...60. This continues, I'm now at an incline of 9.8 and a speed of 3.8mph. The machine displays that if I want to lower the incline I should speed up. I speed up to 4.3 and the incline reduces to 9.6. I feel as if I'm trying to walk up a ladder. The incline is absurd. I'm not out of breath, just envisioning flying off the end of the treadmill Biggest Loser style in the middle of the gym in the Riviera Maya. I reduce the speed back to 4.0 and the incline remains.

I refuse to run. I hate running. And I sure as heck am not going to try to run up a 9.0+ incline! About eight minutes in, the machine finally gives up on me as my heart rate never exceeded 61. For the past two test requests, the machine couldn't read my heart rate at all and it switched over to manual. I did actually proceed to run at manual for the final two minutes.

JN didn't have any problem on her machine getting a heart rate. So when I finished, we switched machines. She was able to get 103 heart rate on my machine and I got...nothing. Nothing on her machine either.

At this point, the employee of the gym as well as another treadmill user tried to tell me how to get my heart rate. I attempted to use whole hand. I used thumb only. I used only finger tips. I held on for minutes at a time. Nothing worked. The employee settled on the fact that the machine must be broken.

If the machine is only "broken" for me, what does that say about my heart rate? Does being cold-hearted reduce your heart rate to non-existent at best?

I can only wonder.

*** As an after thought, I just researched heart rates. If in fact my heart rate was accurate, I was performing at 32.5%. Pathetic.