My Body is All Kinds of Screwed Up
October 13th, 2008So, I’m out of shape. Have been for a while, and I’ve been putting on the middle-aged paunch like nobody’s business. So I decided to start jogging.
I’m taking it slow (I found a web site with an “introduction to jogging” workout schedule), though, to be fair, I misread the directions for week one (jog 60 seconds, walk 90 seconds, repeat) to be “jog 90 seconds, walk 60 seconds, repeat”. So I kinda jumped into week 3 or so, but, still, not a huge leap.
And I’ve found jogging to be far less strenuous than I once believed. I get tired, but I’m not gasping for air at the end. And, curiously, I don’t have that evil metallic taste in my mouth which is one of the things which I always hated about exercise.
However, checking my heart rate, I apparently should be keeling over having a heart attack. My heart rate, at the end of the last jogging leg, is around 176 or so, and on one particular run, around 185. According to pretty much everything on the net, that should be my heart’s physical maximum, and I shouldn’t be able to keep that heart rate for more than a minute. Yet, there I am, with that heart rate, not dying and not feeling particularly bad or winded. Tired, sure, happy that I’m no longer running, sure, but not feeling nearly as bad as, for example, when we had to run around the track in junior high (which I’m still surprised didn’t kill me, considering how bad I felt afterwards).
So I’m so out of shape that my heart has to beat more than it technically should be able to, and yet I don’t feel bad.
Plus, when I checked my vox2max, it says that I’m in “Superior” shape for my age, which I know can’t be right.
So, the paradoxes: I’m in superior shape, but I’m at my max heart rate when I jog. And I’m at my max heart rate when I jog, but I’m not super tired. I don’t know whether I’m in great shape or terrible shape.
I’m pretty sure, though, that the shape of my stomach isn’t great.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Different people have different heart rates. But if yours is really that extreme, perhaps a quick doctors consultation would be in order…
October 13th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that more. Problem is, I don’t really know what kind of doctor to see, and browsing the net hasn’t really helped. I suppose I’ll just call up the big hospital near my house and see which department would handle this. Also, since it’s a bit of an unusual inquiry, and would be considered “preventative medical attention” instead of “reactive medical attention”, insurance probably wouldn’t cover it, so it might be crazy expensive.
October 14th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Where you’re not sure what to do, the usual answer is to go to a General Practitioner. And “I’m worried about my hear rate” should definitely be covered by health insurance. Also things only get expensive once they start giving you expensive procedures, or drugs, one doctor’s visit will not ruin you. (Also it is the U.S. where you need to be super afraid of health-care costs, Japan is more reasonable).
October 14th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Yeah, but Japanese health insurance is weird. It’s very reasonable for any medical attention that fixes a problem. Got a cavity? Get it fixed for something like 1000 yen. But for things that aren’t “fixing problems”, but instead preventing problems, or miscellaneous, and insurance stops applying. Until recently, getting a cavity fixed would cost something like 1000, while just getting your teeth cleaned would cost more like 20000 yen. (They have since worked around this by pretending that any teeth cleaning is “treatment for gingivitis”, and thus insurance applies). Another obvious one is pregnancy and child delivery, which isn’t a disease or injury, and thus isn’t covered by insurance (so the city or ku pays a special stipend to reimburse you).
Of course, a general consultation is cheap anyway, so going to talk to the doctor ABOUT getting my max heart rate measured will be cheap. I’m just not sure how cheap the actual measurement will be.