It's the most wonderful time, of the year...

Day 19 What is your favourite fall workout?

Hmmmmm, favorite fall workouts, lets see...

Pumpkin picking! Or maybe jumping in leaf piles! Marathon carving sessions!

Seriously, this took about four hours straight. Loved every second of it.

I have more in my pumpkin carving toolbox than most (non homeowners) my age have in their whole home toolbox. Yes, I said pumpkin carving toolbox.

What was that, I should focus on stuff that gets my heart rate up?

Oh, in that case it would definitely be the horror movie marathons and shopping for Halloween decorations. Last minute costume crafting counts too, I think.

Ok, for real though.

I don't honestly know. I'm just too new at this.

Running is the first real "get out and do stuff" physical activity I've done since my teens. I will say as much as I love sort of existing serenely in the hot weather, 90° at 95% humidity in metropolitan NY air quality is not ideal for aerobic exercise. The cooler temps and rustling in the trees are making my runs approximately a bazillion times better, and aside from worrying about hidden tripping hazards I'm REALLY psyched to be running through the falling leaves soon.

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What active/fitness things did I do today?

Nothing workout-ish, mostly I stuffed myself with random snacks for no apparent reason (though it may be hormonal). I'm not normally into sweets and I've gone for chocolate twice today so something in my system is clearly tweaked.

I did get some totally snazzy stuff from The Cheerleader including the heart rate strap that goes with my new watch, a visor (because she had an extra one and knew I wanted one for rainy days, seriously, how cool is that?), and a shirt from the local running group she has been organizing. 

I don't call her The Cheerleader for nothing.
The woman is a running ambassadorship and enabling juggernaut! (and now you can follow her at RunningOnCandy!)

She and I also share the brain of a twelve year old boy (I keep my half in the work fridge).
We have a sort of immature crudeness based telepathy.

I've decided to go ahead with limiting the Garmin readings to just when I'm running, but I've been a bit stymied trying to figure out what my cutoff pace should be. After digging through a LOT of Nike+ entries I think I'm going to go with 14:00 as I seem to be keeping things up around 12:00 or 12:30 while running with the occasional dip or peak, and I seem to walk slower than 14:00.

I'm also trying to decide if I want to set a minimum pace alarm but that should probably wait until I have a few runs recorded without my warmup/cooldown time throwing the numbers off so I have a better idea of my actual pace.

Tomorrow I start with the heart rate strap!

Did I mention I'm a hummingbird? Per one of the iPhone finger sensor apps I was playing with a few weeks ago I appear to have a resting heart rate comparable to a chihuahua on amphetamines.