Winter Exercise

Now that my Vermillion paddling has more or less come to an end for the season I am changing my habits over to winter. Since the end of last April I have been on the body for life diet. I started with the weights and aerobics that the book recomends but soon found that kayaking the Vermillion gave me a great combination of weights, aerobic and resistance training so I substituted kayaking for the books recomended exercises with good results. I have lost 38 1/2 lbs and had a great year on the river. Now that winter is here I am looking to accomplish a few goals. I feel I need to extend my endurance especially targeting extended intense exertion. I also hope to increase muscle mass and strength. I read in the Star Tribune an article on interval training. The stats they threw out were amazing. It basically said that I could increase my endurance by more than 100% in two weeks by following a basic plan. The only thing they asked for was 20 minutes 3 times a week. You pick the exercise. The generic recipe was 5 min. easy warm up. 1 min maximum intense exercise, followed by 4 min. low or medium exercise. Repeat the 1 min and 4, three times.
Tonight after weights I got on the Eliptical machine. Minutes one thru five were at level 2 warm up. Minute five was at level 7, followed by four minutes at level 3. Minute ten was at level 8 followed by four mimutes at level 4. Minute fifteen was at level 9 followed by four at level 5. I finished with minute 20 being at level ten and cooled down at level 2. Since being back at the Y my Eliptical work out has seemed like more work...today I feel I had gotten a better workout and wasn't tired and bored. Looking ahead at what other aerobic exercise would be beneficial for me I've decided to try lap swiming only using the interval plan. 5 warmup laps, one intense followed by 4 easy. I'm hoping I can do this as lap swimming in the past has bored me to tears. Has anyone else trained interval training?
12-29-05 update
I tried interval training for about a week. Judging from the response to my heart rate it works very well. Just one problem with me is that I get bored with this kind of training really fast. After we recieved that nice snow the cross country ski trail at Mississippi Golf Links looked so much better...that is until it melted the week before Christmas. I hoping to get more skiing in soon.