Making do the lunch break

Went for a 20mins run during lunch yesterday. With the new job, environment and increasing work load, it is even trickier for me to achieve the a healthy-life balance, well, compared to my old work place. I am trapped 0830-1730 hrs daily , 9 hours a day and 45 hours a week. I felt so out-of-shape the first week I was here.. !!

The less exercise I do, the more easily tired I become ! Apart from the accumulating fat, I just feel so out of shape with the office routine which requires me to sit and work with the computer, occasionally making calls and having to walk to the bosses’ office/photocopy machine/pantry. Office is on 13th floor, and there’s no access to fresh KL air at all .. only bosses’ office are adjacent to the windows – but still, I find it funny as there’s no window that can open. Basically, I’m sealed along with my colleagues, who I am getting to know closer day by day, in this concrete-metal-glass-brick tower !! Part or not part of the job, I gotta keep fit and healthy.

The 20 minutes vertical work out was just nice to fit in the 1 hour break. There is no shower facility here, hence would be a mess to be sweating like an oink oink with a hard work out at the stairs, or even running outside in the KL humidity and afternoon heat. So a 20minutes easy stairs workout it was.

– brought running attire and gears (HR monitor included) & water from home.

– changed, and headed to the stairs

– Now… APPARENTLY the staircase is used by the staffs to get their fair amount of ‘fresh’ air.. Air from their ciggies ! I was warned by my colleague that the stairs stink , my hair will stink etc, but I still insisted to proceed with the plan. Imagine a week without any workout — I just had to squeeze in the 20mins, hook or by crook.

And so I did. The stairs still smelled eventhough the smokers has left.. worse still, cigarette butts were thrown on the floor.. what a shame..

The work out which I did :-

1) Slow jog from 11th down to 4th floor.

2) Slow run from 4th – 6th floor

3) Fast walked from 6th to 9th floor

4) Slow run from 9th to 11th floor ( couldn’t proceed to 13th floor as the ciggie stink is just unbearable !)

 5) And repeat till the 20mins was up. 

My unfit heart rate reading below :-

Below 117 , 35sec

In zone 117-147 , 8mins 2 sec

147 and above , 11mins 25sec

Max heart rate 174. Average 151.  The run pace was a slow one. The idea was not push, but neverthless a good work out for the heart ! And I did sweat ! I felt oh-so relieved after the work out. Had to ignore the colleagues who weren’t pretty amazed of my little feat. attempting something not-so-out of the ordinary. Thinking of it, hey, your health is YOUR responsibility. In my case, as far as my work place is concerned, that’s the only work out most suitable that I can think of at the moment. Whether you are young, old, busy or not, make time and effort to balance a healthy life style, physically, mentally and spiritually !