I took a few days off my handcycling, because it was getting a little stale. I've been doing the typical strength training and other cardio and rounded my cardio up yesterday with a Norwegian 4x4 on the Arc Trainer. Kicked my ass -- I slept good last night

I decided to do easy cardio today on the handcycle and it was not stale. Good workout. I did 30-minutes @ level 5 averaging ~60 RPM; then 15-minutes @ level 7 averaging ~45 - 50 RPM; then 15-minutes @ level 5 averaging ~45 - 50 RPM, with a three max efforts thrown in for about 20 - 30 seconds each.

What's interesting is that my HR was averaging about 130 BPM, which is an easy aerobic activity and if I rode my bike at this HR level I would nearly fall asleep. However, on the handcycling machine it was difficult to maintain, not that my muscles were sore, since I've been lifting weights for years, rather it was a total cardio event where when I stopped my arms were pumped like crazy. I won't be sore tomorrow, so it's not a muscular thing happening here.

This tells me that the blood vessels in my arms/upper body are not as flexible and wide as they could/should be; furthermore, it tells me that I'm also building new blood vessels. And on top of that, I must be building more mitochondria.




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