13 Resting BPM

Our hearts pump blood to keep blood circulating all over our body. This keeps the blood going all over every part of your body to supply each part with the nutrients needed like Oxygen and Iron(which makes the blood red). If the heart stops, we die. When we exercise and tire ourselves, the more oxygen and other things like sodium and magnesium is needed in our body, especially in the body part that is exerting effort. The more it these nutrients need to circulate, the blood needs to be pumped by the heart.

What fitness trainers use as a gauge for one’s endurance is the heart rate. There is the resting heart rate which is the rate of your heart in beats per minute(BPM) when you are doing nothing. The lower it is, the fit you are, because it takes a longer time for your heart to reach it’s maximum capacity.

And to improve on this, you need to do aerobic exercises(not necessarily the aerobic class many people think of with a lot of women in spandex). Aerobic exercises is nothing but doing a continuous exercise that will make your heart pump about 65 to 75 percent of your maximum heart rate. Going lower than that is said to not improve your heart rate, and going beyond will just burn you out so fast you can’t do anything anymore.

I remember my resting heart rate back in college to be near the 60 BPM range. Today it is like 80 to 90 mainly because of my type of goiter that I have. I have hypertyroidism where my thyroid gland tells my brain that it needs more blood to be pumped there and my heart goes to work, thus I get tired more easily. There were times that my knees hurt because of the lack of blood going there since my Thyroid gland wants more attention.

But it is getting better now since I do not get any problems with my knees. And maybe because I have been avoiding patis and bagoong which are rich in iodine that I do not need because of my hyperthyroidism.

Well I just thought of talking about this because of my admiration of Lance Armstrong who is veing for his 7th Tour de France win! If he wins that will be tour history for him. 7 consecutive wins is a feat that I think cannot be beaten for a very long time. And I have heard his resting heart rate is 13 BPM! Imagine that? Thinking of the human body as a machine… how is that possible? It is slightly more than 4 seconds for every heart beat. And these nutrients should be spread all over your body to live. That means each pump is strong that it is sufficient enough to supply the body with what ever it needs from the blood.

Well Tour de France started with a time trial, one of Lance’s rivals German Jan Ullrich, a former winner also started out 1 minute earlier than Lance since it is a time trial lap, and Lance pass by Jan! lolz :)) funny.

Six-time Tour de France winner and leader of the Discovery Channel cycling team, Lance Armstrong of Austin, Texas, rear right, overtakes T-Mobile team leader Jan Ullrich of Germany, foreground, 3 kilometers (2 miles) before the finish line during the 1st stage of the Tour de France cycling race, a 19-kilometer (11.80-mile) individual time trial between the coastal town of Fromentine and the island of Noirmoutier, western France, Saturday, July 2, 2005. David Zabriskie of the U.S. won the stage in 20 minutes and 51 seconds, Armstrong finished 2 seconds behind and placed second, Ullrich finished in 12th place.
(AP Photo/Pierre Lablatiniere/Pool)

And a surprise time trial win came from American David Zabriskie who has the best time trial performance in the whole history of Tour de France!

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