Operating Temperature

After 12 minutes I shed my sweat jacket, and in another 10 off came the T-shirt. I was then at Operating Temperature and Pressure on the Precor elliptic.

I then raised the ramp to max, the load to 14 and continued on to finish my usual hour of cardio, followed up by a cool down.

I love riding and hiking outside because I enjoy Mother Nature, but I like indoor machines because I can load, instrument and gauge my progress. In either case, I warm up. Warming up and stretching is always required. Years ago I had tendonitis until I figured it out... the human machine has to ramp up or it breaks.

Of course, machines are the same way as my body in the sense that they need warming up too. Mash that accelerator hard right after you crank the car and you've taken a thousand miles off your car lifetime and you're looking for a blown head gasket, rod or main bearing.

There are differences, though. I found that part of the solution to healing my emotionally broken heart was to try to physiologically break it.

That is, give it a hard workout, make the sucker pump and take it to its limits. Associated with that was a serious diet that would allow me to do it. This is both different and the same from the warm up guideline in that both still need warm up, but my heart does adapt and grows stronger emotionally and physically, unlike my car.

I wish I could have somehow taken my heart to emotional Operating Temperature and Pressure before it broke earlier this year.

- © 2007 by Willy
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