I've been primarily using HIIT to build VO2 max since I read Dave Asprey's latest book. I'm taking his claims at face value, which may be a mistake--I haven't tried to independently corroborate them aside from attempting to put them into practice and seeing what happens.Scott 2 wrote: ↑Mon May 22, 2023 8:30 am...I wonder if the hideout gives opportunity to accumulate those easy minutes. Could be an interesting experiment - watch heart rate and see what sort of load you can get. Maybe your standard hiking and paddling is a little too easy, but you can get in zone with some focused effort?
Is there biking in that area? Could be another fun option, now that you're showing up so fit already.
Because of where I started and have improved to, it shouldn't be too hard in principle to make some gains over 4 months, although I don't know how well they'll translate to improved 2K row times on the Concept2, which has been my metric.
My intent going in is mainly just to continue my current regimen with paddling the kayak substituting for the concept2. The walking/hiking facet will naturally ramp up in intensity simply due to the terrain. The harder part will be effectively using the yak. My comfortable "aerobic" paddling speed is about half what my little electric motor will do, meaning paddling costs me fishing time. I'll try to be more disciplined about that than I was last year. Another angle is that there's a good number of days when I don't fish out of the yak at all due to the wind being high enough to make fishing out of that small a boat impractical, but there's no reason I can't get out and paddle around most of those days, and fighting the wind requires a lot more energy output. Of course I'll have the bands too, but those are more for strength and mobility. And one thing I've sort of neglected is body weight exercises which I'll likely start at some point over the summer in HIIT-style context.
Biking is an option, at least I see people riding them along some of the roads. I don't encounter them on the trails very often. The close by USFS network would require one to carry the bike frequently (and they my not even be allowed on those specific trails) but the 36-mile round trip along the state highway to town would be a pretty robust workout. That's worth future consideration, but at this point I don't own a bike so for this summer it's not an option on the table.
The elephant in the room is simply running. Unfortunately, it's something I truly hate. Ironically, I competed in track in high school. I was competitive in any event of 400m (actually, back then it was 440 yds) or shorter, but anything 800m and up--forget about it. Nevertheless, at some point I'll probably suck it up and add some short running intervals to the hiking/walking--something like walk for 5 min, "sprint" for 10 seconds, walk for 5 min, etc. The reason sprint is in quotes is the last time I was timed in a 100m sprint, about 12 years ago, my best was around 14-15 seconds--definitely lost most of my quick twitch over the years.
I guess the theme to what I'm saying is the opportunities are certainly there, what's probably in question is the self-discipline aspect of it. To a large extent the motivation to improve my physical capacity, looking past the overall health implications, is specifically to maximize my enjoyment of the season at the hideout by having the capacity to be active as much as possible. But at the same time I don't want to turn it into an extended boot camp. When goals conflict enjoying myself will probably win out. My vision is that the other 8 months of the year can be boot camp, and the 4 mos at the hideout the reward.
I've been resisting the urge to get a Garmin watch or oura ring, in part because that would in turn increase the pressure on me to abandon my old flip phone and enter the 21st century.
