KABOOMER: Movement as Good Medicine!

What am I doing to celebrate this [February] month of healthy hearts?
I’m rowing in the CRASH-B indoor rowing championships next Sunday. That is my personal validation of Maximum training rate, VO2max, heart rate reserve and high aerobic threshold performance to row 2,000 meters as quickly as possible. Some offer that it is nutty to do this :), ask me in a week…

To paraphrase marathoner Bill Rodgers, going fast is better so the exertion and discomfort is over sooner…

• How about a self test for your own cardio-respiratory endurance? Try a step test, mile run, or in my case a 500 meter red zone ERG sprint.

http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/118/book_pp_152-160.pdf

Is “cardio” endurance important?  You bet your booty it is, if you’re interested in putting life in your years and years in your life, that is!  Here’s one professional view ( of many!): Improving Endurance

How about these interesting factoids and trivia for our tickers?
See https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Fascinating+facts+about+the+human+cardiovascular+system.-a0527524876

These listed numbers are “mean” averages – with high variability – like age.  My resting heart rate as a collegiate athlete was 30 beats per minute.  It’s in the low 40 beats per minute range these days… Our ticker our time machine generally raises resting heart rates and lowers maximum heart rates as we age.

• 60,000 miles of arteries, veins and capillaries!?
• Over 2 Billion heart beats in a lifetime (average)
• 2,000 gallons of pumped vitals daily!
• Single file passage of red blood cells through the narrowest conduits (capillaries)
• 5 million blood cells in a drop of blood
• Red blood cells may be regenerated every ~ 120 days after their “lengthy” trips in red and blue channels of our body. Then – off to our graveyard lymphatic system and spleen ( https://www.livescience.com/44725-spleen.html ) (ref: 120 days) – I’d be tired too!