Phoning It In

I made it to the gym this morning and did the grocery shopping. How’s that for talented?

Nah, but…seriously. I find that riding and scrolling makes the time on the bike go by much faster, but also causes me to be a lot less productive on the bike.

For example, I burned almost 20 fewer calories multitasking today than I do when I am solely focused on riding, the reason being, I think, because I forgot to change the difficulty levels through the workout as quickly as I usually do. I spent a disproportionate amount of time on Level 1, burning fewer calories than I could have on, say, Level 4.

You might think, “It’s 20 calories, chill the $&!@ out.” But, I don’t know. It might be 20 calories, like the machine says. Or the small numerical discrepancy might be an indicator of a bigger difference than just numbers.

I definitely wasn’t sweating as profusely as usual, either, so I was probably working at a lower intensity. I didn’t feel like I was working quite as hard as I normally do, because I was juggling my phone and trying to read.

So I think I can be pretty sure that I didn’t get as good of a workout. The same would be true, by the way, if I didn’t have music to listen to, and appropriately paced music is even better.

The question is, would I do it again?

I don’t know. It depends on whether I want a good workout, or just to get through the workout.