That’s A Workout!

I hate snow as completely as a person can hate snow. Every flake is a personal insult. Snow represents not fun, but work. It’s another form of trash: something I have to discard, just like autumn leaves or used kitty litter. And my hatred for snow is only enhanced by my ownership of a corner lot. I have sidewalks on two sides of my house, not just one. There’s 121 feet on the north side and 94 feet on the east side, plus another 47 feet from the front door to the streetside mailbox. My driveway is 52 feet long and fans out from 19 feet wide at the garage door to 22 feet wide at the curb.

It’s a lot of concrete. Any measurable snowfall leaves me with more than an hour of shoveling if I want to clear it all. I briefly utilized a snowblower about 20 years ago, but I hated it. Not only was it extremely loud, but also it didn’t clean down to bare concrete. I went back to shoveling and, while I despise it, I’m a demon at it. Remember the legend of John Henry, the “steel-driving man” who could hammer his way through solid rock faster than a steam powered drill? I’m that good with a shovel: I frequently clear my sidewalks faster than my snowblowing neighbors. And I don’t die of heart failure at the end, so there’s that!

Of course, some people do die of heart failure during or shortly after shoveling. Your local newscast will be happy to warn you about the dangers every winter. So, just how hard is it? Today I measured my effort as I cleared 5-6 inches of snow from my sidewalks. I left the driveway alone; we’ll be somewhere around 40° tomorrow and Sunday, and I have nowhere to go in the meantime. Here’s what today’s sidewalk cleanup looked like statistically:

That’s no joke: a workout of 53 minutes, 40 seconds, with an average heart rate of 116, a maximum heart rate of 150, and an estimated energy burn of 332 calories. I would have to walk almost 3 miles at a brisk pace to match it, and there are plenty of hour-long Zwift rides on which I don’t approach 17:30 above Zone 3. Enough snow shoveling would beat almost anyone into shape … if it didn’t beat him to death.