Friday, October 31, 2008

Treadmill Desk, Week 10

Saturday: 240 minutes.

Sunday: 140 minutes.

Interesting note: The scale says I've lost five pounds in the last four (three?) weeks. It's not necessarily significant, particularly, since I can have a five pound variation either way in any given day depending on how much or how little I eat. Five pounds a month is about the amount projected by the inventor of the concept. (OK, 57 pounds a year which is four-and-three-quarters pounds a month, but are we going to split hairs here?)

The only thing I've added is a little stretch at 100 minute intervals, so perhaps there is a metabolic change going on.

Monday: 365 minutes.

Tuesday: 340 minutes.

Wednesday: 260 minutes.

Thursday: 360 minutes.

Looks like I'll be hitting the 30 hour mark pretty easily. That's good. It's weird, but I've had this interesting shift of pains through the weeks, I presume as different muscles get stronger and take the load off the improper ones. My back is better (though I'm still tight as a drum). Now it's more outer thighs, lower calves and a bit around the joints. Except for a slight feeling of overwork on the ball of the right foot, the various "wrong" pains have all gone away.

The last couple of weeks, I've slowed down to .5 mph again. I do that because I know my tendency is to crank it up a bit and suffer a little. (Years of karate training.) The fact that I've had to build up to this level suggests that I was way farther out of shape them most of the people who have done this. Or maybe that they're hiding this sort of stuff. But, seriously, I was on the way to making myself an invalid, I think.

Friday: 221 minutes. Trick 'r treatin cuts into the 'millin'. The kids had fun, though. The Boy went out with his pal and came back about 90 minutes later with 20 pounds of candy. Times like this he hates being diabetic.

Weekly total: 1926 minutes. Unless I did the math wrong, that puts me three minutes over week eight, my record to date. And that week I did one eight hour day. I'm actually not sure what to make of it. My legs feel a bit weak this week, though I had no problem escorting The Flower on her second round of treating. I felt close to a leg cramp, though.

At the same time, the 30+ hour mark is good, I think. And doing a bit every day seems smarter and more effective than stuffing in the super long days. Still guessing at this part.

2 comments:

  1. I believe Seth Roberts tried a treadmill desk concept for a while but wasn't impressed with the result.

    Seth is kind of a nutty Berkeley psych professor whose main interest is self-experimentation. But he does conduct real research (with rats and everything!) and some of his ideas work. Probably not for the reason he thinks they do, but they're interesting to play with.

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  2. Oh, yeah, I've done stuff like that. I went through a fasting phase and came to the conclusion that food was probably optional.

    My methodology may need some work.

    But the Treadmill-Desk has worked out well, I think, for my specific case, anyway. The only I haven't worked out is reading a book. And mostly because I'm lazy and don't read many books for work these days.

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