HIIT on the Treadmill

hiit_treadmill
My heart rate during HIIT

How I do it

  • 5-minute warmup at around 8 or 9km/h (5 or 5.6mp/h)
  • 30 second sprint between 15 and 16 km/h (9.3 and 9.9mph). I usually start at 16 km/h and go down each sprint.
  • 30 second pause (I let the treadmill go fast while I lift my body up with my arms and spread my legs to each side of the treadmill)
  • all in all 10 times sprinting
  • after 14 minutes 30 seconds the cooldown begins
  • 5 minutes 30 seconds cooldown at 9 to 7km/h (5.6 to 4.4mp/h)

I do 30/30 sec. because it’s easy to monitor, you sprint/pause at either a half or a full minute.

Why I prefer HIIT on the treadmill

  • you sweat, a lot!
  • after every sprint you are so looking forward to the next 30 second pause
  • the 20 minutes go by fast
  • it’s short
  • it’s not as boring as running a constant speed all the time (running on a treadmill is sooo boring)
  • it’s exhausting
  • it’s a short effective training
  • I love the sweat!
  • I love being out of breath!

I always monitor my pulse which goes down to around 85% – 88% of my max. heart rate after each sprint. My top rate is between 95% and 99% for a few seconds. If I make a pause of one minute my heart rate goes down to about 70%.
When I go jogging outside I sometimes do some sprints, sometimes not.

This evil thing named “fruit”

fruit
Ok, so this is a “What the Fudge?!” rant.

Why is it sooo weird (or I don’t know what) for some people I work with if I eat fruit (or like to eat fruit)?
I eat fruit and veggies daily.
I eat my veggies for dinner and my fruit at work, seeing I spend most of my active day at work (how sad), it’s a good snack, it’s got nutrients and I’m just not in the mood to eat fruit in the evening (unless I make a shake).
I eat at least three different fruits a day, apples, nectarines, pears, grapes, mangos… you name it. It’s boring to always eat the same. So, at the beginning of the week I go shopping for fruits. Seeing the week has five working days I buy 5 times 3 fruits. Meaning, I’ve got about 15 fruits in my fruit bowl (at the moment I’ve got apples, pears and nectarines). They’ll last for the whole week, I only have to go shopping once.
It’s weird for people who visit me in my office to see that bowl full of fruits. They’ll ask me “LOL are you selling this? Is this just for decoration? What – You are actually EATING this?!?!” When they see me cutting my fruit in the kitchen to mix it with cereal or yogurt they mostly comment. “Oh, you always eat soo healthy” is one of the most comments I get.
It gets annoying after you’ve heard it for a few times. Now I just smile and say “yes” – in the beginning I always felt that I had to justify why I’m eating fruit.

And I wonder why the hell is it so not-normal for people if someone eats a lot of fruit. I wonder if those people never eat fruit? If their wifes (yes, it’s mostly the men who eat no fruit at work at all) never buy fruit for them because fruit is bleh and too healthy and just bleh?!
Are the women who see me eat fruit frustrated because they’d rather eat a sandwich or a candy bar as a snack and know that an apple is healthier than a Snickers?

I don’t know…

Pizza

The biggest Pizza in the City.
bigpizza
Half Italian Sausage, half veggies.
I invited my boyfriend for a birthday dinner, we watched “Despicable Me 2” before that (cute movie, the first is cuter and funnier but pt.2 is good too).
The pizza is so big it hardly fits on the table (and plate) and guess what?! I ate it all!

It’s a Girl

Today it’s official – I’m becoming my second niece!

So, sometime in January 2014 I’ll have two nephews and two nieces 🙂 I’m having trouble remembering the birthyears already. I know the dates, but the year?! Too challenging to remember.

See T1, now you know what I blog about… important things like this (and enough not important crap 😉 ). You can even comment below 🙂

I posted this blog post exactly 7! years ago

Gnocchi with a Bacon-Cream Sauce

It’s a dinner which goes fast and men (at least mine) love it (it’s got bacon) 🙂
Got the idea from my mom, she made it a couple of weeks ago and it was soo good so I started making it as well (with the help of my boyfriend of course).
Gnocchi with cream and bacon
You need:

  • Gnocchi (500g for two people)
  • Butter (you can use oil, but seing it’s a quite fatty meal already (cream, butter, bacon) I use butter for the taste
  • Onions
  • Bacon
  • Cream
  • grinded Parmesan Cheese
  • To spice it up: Herbs, sunflower seeds, black & white pepper, Curcuma, salt

In a pan, put a chunk of butter with the onions and let them get glassy. Then add the bacon and sunflower seeds if you want. Add the cream and grinded parmesan and let it simmer. Add spices.
I then made the Gnocchi in a separate pan and added the cream sauce and mixed it all together. Tastes good with a big mixed salad on the side.

Things I love while biking in the City pt.I

What I love and enjoy most when I ride to work and back home: little hideaways where there are no cars and almost never people. I always look for little sideways I can ride and I’m more than happy to take a bit longer to work but to have the feeling I’m riding in nature.
Biking in the City
Sometimes it’s really hard to believe I’m in the middle of a big city 🙂