Tough treadmill run + strength bike

I woke up at 5:30 am, downed a cup of pre-brewed coffee courtesy of my coffee maker's timer function, and headed out to the gym. When I go to the gym in the morning I always forget at least one item among my work clothes, my breakfast and morning snacks, and my workout accessories even if I pack all my stuff up the evening before each morning workout. Fortunately, Stacey accompanied me and, in addition to providing company, was kind enough to loan me her HR monitor after I realized I brought my Polar strap sans the essential HR transmitter. Unfortunately, I also forgot non-running underwear, and Stacey refused to bail me out by lending me hers.

Still, the run went well. After a 10 min. warm-up, I did some quick mental math necessitated by the irritating fact that the treadmill displays speed in miles per hour instead of minutes per mile, and then raised the speed to 8.6 mph (or, as anyone that has run more than a hand-full of times would say, 7:00 per mile). I increased the gradient by 1% every 10 minutes for 40 minutes before completing a 10 minute cool down, and here are the stats:

Incline (%) --- HR (bpm)
0 --- 150
1 --- 158
2 --- 170
3 --- 178

Next up was an evening strength bike (1 hour). Not too much to write home about (or blog about, for that matter). My legs were tired, but I'm not sure if that was due to the morning run or this past weekend's rides. Still, the quad-burning sensation during the low RPM sets was nice, and afterwards my legs were as ripped as Sean Kelly's Herculean stumps:


Well maybe not. But my legs are probably more ripped than these Little Herculean legs: