Elliptical: 45', ~60 rpm, HR ~160 bpm, calories ~675 Resistance training, upper
body:
Bicep curl with bar, 3x12 @30
Bicerp curls with dumbbells, 3x12 @10
Seated row, 3x12 @40 (50)
Lat pull, 3x12 @50
Tricep rope push, 3x12 @50
Chest press, 3x12 @20
Shoulder press, 3x12 @25
Tricep extension, 3x12 @25
Back extension, 3x12 @
Forty-five minutes despite having left my headphones on the dining table from my last Buffy episode. Loud music not of my choice (e.g. John Cougar Mellencamp) and captioned televisions. It was that dark hour between news and primetime...the horror, the horror. After a couple of puzzles on "Wheel of Fortune" (that contestants didn't guess), for instance, here:
M-UN-
V--N-N
-N
V--G-N--),
(Last Thursday I also didn't have headphones. I caught a glimpse of a show on Fox in which humans pit animals against humans. How, exactly, do you goad a giraffe to run in the absence of a large predator? I took off my glasses. That's a good thing about the elliptical: I'm stable enough that I don't need glasses for balance. (I haven't been wearing contacts as much lately: supplies are running out and these new spectacles are much lighter than previous pairs.))
Is it possible to backdate stuff in Moveable Type?
And then, o joy, sushi. Maguro, saba, sake, yellowtail, and surf clam, and a California roll because avocado is good fat. The fellow next to us ordered a slew of wee little crabs, which I guess were flash-fried whole. He offered me one. Tasty. Crunchy. Sweet. Like a chocolate frog.
So far the Reebok Core class at the gym has been my favorite: lots of balancing, requiring strong muscle around my middle (note to self: develop same). The instructor leads well in that she's clear and consistent, but I wish I could stop noticing that her breasts and tan are fake and that her upper lip (? the actual skin between her mouth and nose) is pierced. I imagine yoga, more than the three tapes I've followed haphazardly over the years, real yoga I mean, requires strength of micro-control. I also liked the one "piyo" class, a combination of pilates and yoga, that I attended.
But I found a found a real yoga class at a yoga studio that I can walk to. One that isn't bikram. I was excited to see another, closer studio open, until I learned it offers only bikram, which frankly sounds like hell on earth. Maybe if I go hardcore I'll appreciate the extra bendiness and pore-cleansing a superheated yoga class offers, but not now.
Some genius forgot to pack my sneakers before going to the gym. However, the same genius remembered to pack my swimsuit and goggles, so I swam for 40 minutes. I brought my bathing suit (cut straight across the chest in a square neckline) once before, when I did a few desultory laps and soaked in the hot tub for a while. My swimsuit, which I might call a racing suit if I swam fast enough for that, comes up to the neck. No drag.
Anyway, forty minutes and I entirely lost count of laps. It takes longer (for me) to swim a kilometer in a shorter pool (this one is 25 meters) than a longer because I can't do a flip-turn. If I could turn right, I could make up for twice as many turns by thrusting off the side.
What I'm really proud of is that two of those lengths (not laps) were butterfly. Sloppy, technically meritricious, I'm sure, but 2x25 meters of fly. My heart threatened to burst forth both times. I don't push myself swimming the way I ought to, and clearly my strength and stamina are not as developed as my determinedness. But they could be. I know I could already feel a difference in my deltoids.
Legs with the trainer again. Lunges two lengths of the gym, then ballsquats, stationary lunges, and regular squats, three sets of each exercise until my legs were jelly.* Calf raises, not yet balanced enough to hold weights but enough only to touch the railing occasionally. "Russian twists" on the fitball, shoulders on the ball and planted feet, rotating shoulders with stationary hips: obliques. Then prone, chest on the ball, walking forward on my hands until the ball was under my knees, holding for a count of ten or infinity or whatever: whatever the muscles are across your saddle. Some hack squats, and he talked me through adding 20 pounds to the original 90 in the third set. And I could do it!
Then a step class. This is not your mother's step class. Okay, I'm new to this instructor, but Chris leads a much harder class than anything I have taken.
Which isn't saying much: community center step and adult ed step just aren't that hard. The December I graduated from college, to move home for the eight months before I started grad school, my father bought me membership in his gym. That was great, because both my parents went and it was such an easy stop between work and home. That's when I first did step, which can't have been new in 1991, was it? New enough that I remember a lot of instruction rather than stepping.
But still, the man is on two risers (per side) and never sounds short of breath. The final killer element in the two classes I've taken so far has been ski hops. Some people, like me, just hop, and I can work in the occasional higher hop with my heels approaching my ass. Others, like him, hop much faster overall, while landing side to side, with fully bent legs. This would be why I will never ski moguls.
*Putting this into my exercise spreadsheet, having not counted how many repetitions I did, I could not quantify it numerically. So I wrote, "To the pain," because once again, "The Princess Bride" is a useful movie.
I know it was delusional of me to think that I could get a quick cardio workout before the PiYo class last night. (D'ya think whoever named PiYo also named TiVo?)
First the traffic was thick (there's a reason I generally don't drive at that hour), then the gym was obviously packed: The parking garage had a traffic jam in which I idled for the entire length of "Bullet the Blue Sky" (every radio station in Denver has been on a U2 kick lately, mosty from War and Unforgettable Fire, which makes me happy). So I parked way the hell over there and skedaddled in through a gap that looked like nowhere I should be after dark, or wanted to be at any time at all. When I got in, mentally glowering at everyone who walks slower than I (everyone), every locker was occupied (so I vultured over a woman who was leaving, and as I waited, someone else asked if she could use it), and the line for the cardio stuff was 20 people long.
I asked at the desk about a sign-up sheet for the PiYo class, and the clerk said there wasn't one but he would pass the idea along. I reminded him that a sign-up sheet is a piece of paper and he could easily get one out of the drawer. (I saw the sheets when I asked to sign up for a 5:30 step class one evening.) Blank stare. So I went along to ask someone else with a little more brain. A manager explained that they had sign-ups for equipment classes, like step and core, because they have only so many pieces. I understood that, I told him, but if you have 35 steps but a studio room big enough only for 28 stepping people, 28 should be the limit on the waiting list. But that's not what I'm asking about, I reminded him. He said that sign-up sheets were a corporate matter, and by this time he was taking steps toward me in that way that makes some people back up (and also me back up when I don't expect it). Not yet intimidated, I asked why corporate policy superseded common sense. "That's just the way it is."
Great. Apparently I'm going to a gym governed by my mother's logic.
Anyway, the class was good. Crowded. Swan-diving down as if my torso had any chance of meeting my legs, I noticed my belly, pooching over the waist of my "yoga" pants. These are new, hence the lower waist that doesn't cover the flab. Twisting into eagle pose (do eagles twist their wings one around the other, or their legs?), I had two problems: the balancing itself, and the bulk of my leg getting in the way of its bendiness. I am bendier than my fat allows.
Elliptical: 40' @ levels 13-15, heartrate ~155, calories ~600+
Then some weights, but I didn't bring the sheet that says what weight on which piece so I wasted time dithering around.
Cage seated row, 3x10 @50
Lat pull (back) 3x12 @50
Cage tricep rope push down 3x10 @50
Hammer incline chest 3x10 @30
Cybex leg extensions 3x12@70
Back extensions, 50
Also there is an exercise for my transverse abdominals, kinda like a pushup but you're always up, up on your forearms and toes with your abs as tight as can be. When I started this three weeks ago, it was a struggle to do two 30" holds. Now I can do 90".
The pity is that currently my two workout discs are that ACSS (with Peter Gabriel, natch, "When You're Falling") and my old standby Pearl Jam (most of Ten, with a couple of songs from Stone Free and then some Deadicated. Quiz for whoever's paying attention: who made that disc, me or RDC?)
But several of the tracks on ACSS are really good for cardio work. I always do the elliptical blind now. That's one thing. I couldn't do the stair- or treadmill blind, though. I don't think. Nothing that required me to move my feet.
And I need to have my glasses on for weights, not least because there's nowhere to put them, also because I need to be able to select the different weights. (Half of my weights are on HammerStrength machines, to which you add disks of whatever weight. These are supposed to be better than the other half, Cybex machines with weight stacks. I say, they're both machines so I don't see how HammerStrength gives you a wider range of motion than Cybex, and it takes longer to track down and carry over two 45-pound disks (in two trips, yep) and another two 10s.) This was the first time I did hack squats in glasses, and, since my head is facing straight out and only my eyes look down, I couldn't easily see when my thighs were parallel to the footboard. I suppose I should be able to feel it.
However, I was proud of me because this was the first time I did 110 pounds of hack squat without Natethetrainer coaching me. Before Monday I did 90. I would be glad to perform as well elsewhere without coaching. Because seriously, the man needs to be a Lamaze coach: "Push! You can do it! Breathe! You're doing awesome!"
Two lengths and a side of the gym in lunges, big steps with the back knee an inch off the ground, just don't seem as difficult as they do with him--I need to remind myself to keep my belly tight--even interspersed with wall squats.
Then I came home and did more leg and abdominal and back exercises on the fitball while watching "That '70s Show" and "ER." There is enough room between the couch and tv for this to happen if I get the ottoman out of the way, but using the fitball with television means Blake can't be with me. RDC came down for something or other with Blake on his shoulder; when he spotted the ball Blake got all attenuated and hid behind RDC's head (which entails perching on his shirt collar). I don't think he could manage even being up on his shelf with the ball on the floor: too close, especially with me in mortal peril by actually touching it.
Huh. Something must be happening, because today I am wearing the eggplant suit of legend. I wasn't able to wear it last winter or the one before. The waist is snug, but maybe it always was? It's not binding, and the skirt's not tight across the arse. No hat though, because spectacles.
RDC has lost twelve fucking pounds. Not that I'm bitter. He's a man, so he'd lose faster than I anyway, plus he particularly seems both to gain and to lose weight quickly. But he's in the high 150s now, and I was in the mid 150s when we started last month. (Or not. At my gyn exam I was 156 with clothes and all my hair; the day I bought the scale I was 153; my first weigh-in at the gym was 151.5 post hairhack.)
RDC reminds me of his more responsive basic metabolism and that I spent five days in my mother's house eating ice cream and peanut butter and her pot roast and only going for a few walks, and I roll my eyes. It's still not fair. I'm in the mid to high 140s now, though I seem to have just got stuck at one number and hang there, and I have got to keep losing the fat. It's in our marriage articles that he can never weigh less than I.
Elliptical 45' @ levels 13-15, ~60 rpm, average >150bpm.
But my thighs still hang over my knees. Not pendulously, more like the Camel with the Wrinkledy Knees.
Now that's a better way to get to a mountain. We hied ourselves to Union Station before 7, took a slow train (partly because of the terrain, partly because this country hates public transportation) to Winter Park, and disembarked 100 feet from a lift.
The ride is lovely. Anything is better than the I-70 corridor to begin with, especially with ski traffic. Boulders and snow and creeks and elk and two hours of scenery. Sometimes I watched the world go by; sometimes I read A Whistling Woman.
Of course, the base temperature at 9,000' was 0. Two thousand feet higher up, that much colder. Plus windchill. And falling snow. And blowing snow.
I wore a face mask, a headband, a hat, and goggles: no skin showing. My head was warm, though my peripheral vision (does that include up and down?) was severely compromised. And contacts, which I have to get more of Real Soon Now. My goggles fogged, as did RDC's glasses and goggles to the point he shucked his glasses and skied blind (relatively: two layers of fog being worse than no correction). I wore an undershirt, a turtleneck, a fleece, and a shell. I wore two pair of pants, fleece and goretex. None of me was cold.
Except my wrists. And my fingers.
I need to get gloves with gaiters. I wore glove liners under my gloves, with some sort of chemical hand-warming pads in the palms. I couldn't possibly arrange the gear on my head with lined and gloved hands, but with the face mask on, my teeth couldn't assist with the gloving of my hands. Liners first, head fleece second, then gloves. Thus the pulling down of the glove cuffs didn't happen. Nor the snugging of shell cuffs by velcro over glove cuffs didn't happen. Thus cold wrists.
And my fingers were cold despite the hand-warming pads in the palms. Numb. Stiff.
However, I can feel the difference in my legs. Winter Park has a lot of traversing. I've always been better than RDC at traversing, because of shorter skis and ice-skating, but it still sucks. At the least sign of any slope, this time, both of us would tuck. Tail way up, upper body over, all weight in the toes, to get the most out of whatever little hill there was.
At the end of the day, I didn't feel like a length of chewed string. I felt like a piece of frozen string, sure, but not chewed. That's an improvement.
So. Damn. Cold.
Today was four weeks after I started--minus, in my own mind, the five days of peanut butter and ice cream in my mother's house--so it was measurement day.
I have lost allegedly 3+ pounds of fat--so little?--plus a fraction of pound of muscle--losing muscle? Yet according to his measurements, I've lost .75" at least from each chest, waist, and hips. How that--so much volume though so little change in composition--is possible I don't know. The chest difference I attribute to the first measurement's having been taken over a t-shirt and today's over a snug tank top. I know I haven't worked on weights and core exercises as much as I could have, and the trainer thinks I do too much cardio. As far as I'm concerned, I'm doing really well eating-wise. No crap, like pizza; no excess, like Chipotle; not much fat, like cheese; and mind-boggling small amounts of chocolate. I like to think my stomach's assuming more normal proportions: I used to be able to eat a full burrito and then want dessert (it took until my second or third burrito to eat a whole one at once) and I hope, by having more reasonably-sized portions, that the resting state of my stomach might decrease so I feel full with less.
Then we attacked my legs. Hack squats, lengths of the gym in lunges interspersed with wall-sits (now on one leg or with him pushing on my shoulders), the ball-squat/standing lunge/squat routine. I told him I wanted a butt exercise, and he taught me a fitball exercise: shoulders on the ball, feet on the floor, 25 pounds on the lower belly, drop the hips, squeeze the glutes, raise the hips. Ack.
An hour with Nate, 20' on a recline bike, an hour core class. With Nate, I did
Seated Row, 3x12 @60
Cybex Chest Press, 3x12 @50 I think
Hammer Incline Press, 3x12 @ 50 I think
Standing Lat Pull, 3x12 @70
Assisted Chin-ups, 3x12 @40
Hammer Iso Lat Something or other, 3x12 @50
(All weights uncertain because I don't have my chart.)
Back Extensions, 3x15
Push-ups, 3x as many as I could handle. I expressed doubt about regular push-ups but said I could do lots and lots of modified. He said, "In my world there are no modified push-ups." Oh.
While I was collapsed on a mat between sets of pushups, he asked how long I could hold my prone core thing--the up on the toes and forearms with belly in and hips raised, counting aloud until you herniate your abdominal muscles. "Ninety seconds," I said rashly, hoping that was still true. It is true, and I could have gone longer. The next step is that hold with forearms on a ball.
My appointment was at 4:00 instead of 4:30 because of his previous commitment, so I did 20' on a recline bike. I don't really get the point of recline instead of upright bikes except they are easier to balance on. It doesn't occupy the arms so I held up Wonder Boys while blasting Afro-Celt Sound System. That worked well, since it has few lyrics.
Then I took the Core class, a lot of balancing on wobbly boards, requiring lots of thigh and middle strength. This class was led not by the pierced-lip, fake-tan and -breasts person but by a drill sergeant. The workout included push-ups, and damn it, I was pushed out.
45' on the Precor elliptical, the kind without pushmipullyu handles. Therefore its overall calorie count is lower, because it assumes you don't use your arms. I wish it didn't have stationary* handles, because who needs them? You don't have to move your feet and therefore should be able to balance okay. Where "you" means "I am inconvenienced." For the first 20' I used five-pound hand weights, but they had wide disks at either end and would tangle with each other and the handle-frame of the machine if I moved my arms freely. For the second 25' I used eight-pound weights of a different shape, but I felt the additional six pounds so much that I can't honestly say "for the second 25'." But I'll get there. Also on the arm one, I can keep my rpms around 160 without much of a struggle at whatever level I was doing, 12 or so, but on this one at the same relative level (60% difficulty), my average was about 140. I tried in a few spurts to push up to 175; these spurts lasted about a minute.
*I had "stationery" in here for four days. Those paper handles get so mushy!
Then weights.
Biceps curls, still with 10 pounds in either hand, 3x15.
Bicep curls with a dumbbell, the same 30-pound bar I've been using but apparently atrophying with, because I did a set of 5, of 7, and of 8. Lordy.
Seated row, 3x12 @ 60.
Tricep rope pull down, 3x12 @20. Twenty!
Incline press, 3x12@ 20. Twenty!
When I first started working with the trainer I apprised him of my distaste for shoulders that begin at the ear. Perhaps that's why he hasn't given me any shoulder work yet. Today I did shoulder press for the first time, not particularly writing down my weight. I think 25 pounds.
Two lengths of the gym in lunges, and I totally could do more. The trainer considers the occasional wall sit as a break from lunges, whereas lunges--as least this many--are much easier than the wallsits for me, especially one-legged ones or with him pressing down on my shoulders. I told him my goal of lunging around City Park with its three-mile perimeter. I can dream.
One-legged leg-presses, 3x12 @ 70. That might mean that with both legs together I could press more than 150.
Hack squats, 3x12+ @ 110. This was much harder than it has been just because of doing them later in the workout.
Standing calf raises, something like 75 per leg.
Seated weighted calf raises, 3x12 @45. He told me that these are for the lower part of the calf whereas standing ones work the upper part. I certainly wouldn't mind developing that lovely flat-backed calf muscle, but I need to do these too if they'll alleviate that baseball bat leg condition I have. Whiffle ball bat. I don't mean to imply thinness but lack of definition and fat-ankledness.
Then a slew of ballsquats, standing lunges, and squats. He said eventually I could do a one-legged ballsquat, so I tried one right then. I could bend the weighted leg about a third as much as I ought to.
He asked if I was going to do the step class afterward. No.
I should have done some cardio, either on the Nordic Track or at the gym, but no. I used the fitball while watching the news, a very early episode of "Northern Exposure" (maybe the third of the first season, sigh) and then Buffy. I did twists for my obliques, walk-outs for my lower back, a faintly obscene exercise for glutes, and the prone isometric thing for my core.
Last Day with the trainer, that is. I didn't start blinking red.
Bicep curls with dumbbells, 3x12 @12 (up two pounds!)
Bicep curls with barbell, 3x10 @30
Cybex bicep curls, 3x12 @40?
Tricep pull-down with W-bar, 3x12 @somethingish. There is one pulley on the outside of a particular setup and two on the inside, and I have to remember that the same 20 pounds will seem lighter or heavier depending.
Some other stuff weight stuff.
Then core stuff on the ball, oblique twists and the prone hold-up on the ball instead of the floor.
Then the core class with yet a third instructor--neither obviously fakely breasted and tanned nor a drill sergeant. I liked her.
Finally. Recently it's been either appointments immediately after work with the trainer and too dark (also: too sore) to ride home afterward, or too cold and I don't have the right clothes. I need better gloves to ride when it's under 25. I have a face mask, I have fleece pants. I just need gloves.
Anyway, I rode. Definitely my legs are stronger, if not the pistons of my youth. I rode 2-7 (is there a technical way to enumerate gears?) wherever it was flat (up from 2-5), and 2-5 instead of 2-3 or -4 wherever there was slight incline.
(And there is slight incline, despite Denver's overall flatness. From my house to work is upstream. Not that the slight incline is enough of a hill really to justify the lower gears.)
I expected, going home, to be 3-x all the way, but I didn't count on a strong biting wind. Still, I rode.
20' elliptical, manual program (a flatline, no hills no dips), level 13, heart rate higher than it ought to have been.
Hacksquats, 3x12 @110. Natethetrainer said I should add weight every two weeks. Can't I just add reps for a while?
One-legged leg presses, 3x12 @70. My left leg had an easy time than my dominant right. What's up with that?
Weighted seated calf raises, 60. Those fuckers are hard.
25' elliptical, hill program, level 13, heart rate not so bad.
40' elliptical in two 20' chunks, level 12, maximum incline, always with the arms, though no handweights. I think I prefer the handle-less machines.
Lat pulls, 3x16 @70
Seated row, 3x12 @60
Hammer iso front lat pull, 3x12 @45
Back extensions, 45 (I love these. I want a channel down my back.)
Hammer chest press, almost none
Cybex overhead press, 3x12 @25
30', 20 + 10, Precor Elliptical, level 12, maximum elevation.
3x12 @ 12 bicep curls with dumbbells
3x10 @ 30 bicep curls with a barbell
3x12 @ 30ish arm extensions
I couldn't manage the tricep rope pull down at all.
3x12 @ 40 chin-ups (the assisted chin-up, where the machine assists, for me, over 2/3 of my body weight)
Then it was time for Michael Moore.
20' elliptical, level 12 incline 15, no weights.
50 back extensions
Two lengths of the gym in lunges.
20' and 25' Precor elliptical, level 12, incline 15. Both of our trainers have said that cardiovascular exertion longer than 20' at a stretch (or maybe 30') means the body burns lean tissue. That makes no damn sense to me whatsoever. Lean tissue is protein; fat is energy. However, it's either longer exertions than I should do or--just maybe--the fact that I haven't been restraining myself chocolate-wise because I seem to be going in reverse. Then
3x15 @70 cage lat pull-down
3x12 @25 Cybex overhead press and
A few attempts at a Cybex fly machine, but I couldn't find the right weight. Either it was too light and the flying was nearly literal or too heavy and I couldn't budge it.
For the first time, I did only weights and no cardio at all. I did legs.
Hack squats, 3x15 @115 (up by five whole pounds)
Single leg press, 3x15 @75 (up by five whole pounds!)
Donkey presses, whatever the hell those are.
Prone leg curls, 3x15 @50 (either it was too little weight and the curl was too easy, or it was too much and I couldn't bend my leg fully. I have to work on that.)
Ball squats and standing lunges, not many, intending to do more in front of "Six Feet Under" tonight. Gang aft awry.
Calf raises, 75 per leg
Seated weighted calf raises, 3x15+ @55 (up by ten)
Standing weighted calf raises, 3x15 @ 50.
I haven't been keeping good track of my weights. Obviously. I need to enter everything in a spreadsheet again and then maybe refer to it once in a while. I also need to make up better workout playlists for Dandelion. I also need to go to bed.
20' Precor elliptical, level 12 incline 15. I didn't drink my half-gallon today or remember a water bottle for the gym so after the one 20' stint I didn't wait for another round but moved on to weights.
Iso lat thingie. Incline press. Overhead press. Lateral raise. I haven't written them down yet because I suck. I know one of them was 80 pounds, which impressed me. It hurt to get through 3 sets of 15, but I managed. On another, 3x10 ending with a lower weight than I started with (very bad! write it down!) was a real struggle. I really like the overhead press and the lateral raise. They're the kind of thing that--in an alternate universe, granted--might make my shoulders start at the ear, but they'll improve my swimming, oh yes.
I added the souped up "Little Less Conversation" to a workout playlist and moved "Corduroy" into it too. That helped.
20' and 20' Precor elliptical, level 12 incline 15
Tricep rope pull down, 3x12 @20.
Right after the elliptical I moved toward the back extension frame, but someone got there a step ahead of me. Grr. So I went for the lat pull down, and someone else got there a step ahead of me, with an apologetic look, having I think been waiting for it, and offering to spell sets with me. I shook my head, disliking to alternate sets (moving the weight pin, and what if the person does more or fewer reps with more or less time between...maybe I don't share well). I told him to go ahead, that I'd do tricep rope pulldowns, but that afterward he'd have to help me get another guy off the back extension machine.
"Maybe," he agreed, "but not if he's bigger than me."
I couldn't do the tricep rope pulldowns the past couple of tries @20, where 10 pounds was ridiculously inadequate. And then today, did the pulley pop, or what? Because something moved, and I squoke, and then I could do it. But first I crouched to look at the weight stack: had I not engaged the pin fully? "What happened there?" I wondered aloud.
"I don't know," said the friendly usurper doing lat pulldowns. "But you hurt my ears." I apologized for startling him. To myself, though, I grinned, because using a strong-verb form for the past tense of "squeak" is something I adopted through cockatiel companionship, since he does not speak but squeaks.
For weights I listened to Susan Tedeschi, whom I learned of through my sister. She's like Bonnie Raitt in style and I am well pleased.
Lateral pulldowns, 3x15 @70
Back extensions, 3x15
Arm extensions, 3x12 @30.
After several tryings-on sessions (with all the bikes suspended from the ceiling, and you're not supposed to use the hook yourself to fetch a bike down but get Farm Boy to do it) and research here and there and deciding against the Novara Bonita which might be intended for a woman but is certainly intended for a short woman who wants to sit up as straight as Miss Gulch and doesn't mind pink and also against several other makes and models, I wound up with a 15" hardtail 2003 Marin Palisades. RDC swapped its default with my wonderful cut-out saddle (that link is approximate; remember?) and moved the pannier rack to it from the Cannondale and I rode it to work today and its name is Shadowfax (because it's mostly white).
It's not much, but it's all for today. Two 3.8 mile rides. Oh, and the iso prone core suckinthegut thing this morning. And I kinda might do leg extensions on the ball in a few minutes, if Blake can manage to feel safe on Daddy with The Scary Other, Green Ball in use. (Later.) Nope.
Two 3.8-mile city rides
30" Precor elliptical, incline 15 level 12. You might ask why the cardio after two days of riding. You might also have noticed I have posted no exercise entries since Thursday. You might also find the reason in the fact that yesterday I weighed 150 pounds again. I know why: chocolate. I have to stop. Months ago I bought a four-pound? bag of Ghiardelli bittersweet chips and in the past two weeks, the Tupperware that is their home has become my personal playground, in a walrus-and-carpenter-among-the-oysters kind of way. A fortnight ago it was full; now it's half full. And that's only what I eat at home. There is reasonable chocolate and then there is my recent consumption.
For camping in September I bought a big canister of salted roasted peanuts. It's good fat, right? One morning after Dot Org moved I brought the container in and left it on the counter in the breakroom. It was empty by noon. I should do that with the chips. Except that I like chocolate a lot more than peanuts.
Tricep rope pulldown, 3x10 @30
Upright row, 3x10@70
Lateral pulldown, 3x10@70
Lateral raise, 3x10@35
Assisted pull-ups, 3x10@40
Back extensions, 3x15
Last week I saw a magpie flutter by toting timbers for its castle. The blue jays (which seem well-established in Denver now) are being raucous again. Yesterday I heard and saw a robin singing (sometimes they winter through, but not this year; also, apparently our robins don't winter here but those that do are from farther north). The starlings are caterwauling--odd, since they're birds not cats--and the seed drops more slowly in the feeder.
I might have gone to the gym immediately after work, but I would have spent the entire time fretting about Shadowfax. The gym does have a bike rack, but it's against a blank brick wall instead of ten feet to the right, where it would be in front of the gym's office windows, and that brick wall is extremely close to a bus stop, so that I would see innocent waiting-for-bus-ism as suspicious loitering. Except I wouldn't've been able to see it, because of the brick wall. Hence the fretting.
So instead I came home and Blake and I worked on the front garden. I raked out its winter bed of fallen leaves, discovered new green on the lavender (the one plant that didn't grow at all last year) and on most of the other obviously happier plants. Today I have to call High Country Gardens to find out about how to trim my sophomore garden. (Blake's help consisted of commentary from the porch.)
Tex said I should teach him whatever I learned from my trainer (which I always type "trainder" as I do "raindy"). Tuesday he said he wanted to try my new bike (he's six inches taller than I--I can't wait to see that) and I told him he ought to go to the gym, rather than tootle around on my bike. He promised, so yesterday we went during the day. (I would love to go during the day more often and need to latch onto to regular driver-gymmers.)
He'd said he didn't know how to use any of the weight machines and I advised him of the two free trainer sessions the gym neglected to tell me about until after I'd bought my ten pay sessions. So anyway I thought this was going to be tutelage, although what I could tell him beyond "don't lock your joints, keep your gut sucked in, and align your joints with the pivot points of the machines," I had no idea.
It turned out he would rather use the aerobic machines, and thank the Climbing Tree for that, because--aside from his conservative nature and my lycra--this meant I could crank Alanis and Eddie Vedder and put in some real leg work.
Seated weighted calf raises, 3x15 @50
One-legged leg presses, 3x15 @ 90. Ninety!
Hack squats, 3x12 @120
Donkey presses, 3x15 @60 or so
Leg curls, 3x15 @45
Ball squats and lunges to exhaustion.
If I bike to work tomorrow, it will be the first time since high school (well, college, but that doesn't count) that I commuted to work or school under my own power for all five days.
College didn't count because walking across East Beach from dorm to classroom was about two feet. But why didn't I ever bike during grad school, at least the first year? (Second year I am absolved, since Spring Hill loomed between me and campus.) I didn't have a bike, I guess, Zeph being rusted into a hulk by that point. I borrowed RJH's hybrid for a spell but barely ever used it. I carried a lot of stuff and didn't have good panniers, I know. Once while I lived with NBM she drove me to campus when Fugly was being worked on and she ribbed me about my baggage: my regular backpack, a gym backpack (I had just done laundry; it usually lived at either of my campus jobs), and a stack of library books (probably I had just given up on yet another paper).
Anyway. I rode my new bike. Naming it Shadowfax might be overkill: I already always mount a bike from the left, as I would a horse (I've been on a horse I think twice), but naming the bike a) at all and b) after a horse and c) after that particular horse is making me think in horse-metaphor a lot more. When I started bike-commuting I started keeping my bike in the basement rather than the garage, which entails fewer locks to unlock and lock. Now every afternoon I think of stabling it (and I pat it on the saddle as I leave it). When I prop it (right side against the prop) and the front wheel falls left, I think of how a horse turns its nose to look at its human.
I am not so far gone that I hesitate to hang it from a hook in the indoor bike closet at work though.
Beautiful. Snow to the eyebrows, just as it should be.
From this to this. Saturday, the mountains looked like this from City Park. Sunday, the mountains looked like that from Rocky Mountain National Park.
I do love the dark blue of the sky, the wind lifting the snow off the peaks, how the sun glazes the skin of the snow into liquid, the patterns on the surface from the melt underneath, the vertical thrust of cliff without snow.
I really don't know what to do about graphics.
Anyway, 5 miles easy snowshoeing.
And also this, Long's Peak across Bierstadt Lake. This is the halfway point, and where we stopped to fuel and water ourselves. We saw people feeding gray jays and I said nothing.
The day before, in City Park, I did not say nothing. A woman called for her daughter who had strayed far from the museum toward the pond. The mother, not dressed for snow, called, and the girl, tromping around in said snow, didn't obey, and they yelled back and forth
("Don't go any farther! Come back here!"
"Why!"
"Come back!"
"Why!")
and after closing half the distance between them having to listen to this I was sick of it and hollered at the girl, "Because she said so!" Which really helped, I know: it enforced the mother's inability to discipline her child and the girl's lack of need to obey her parent and the rudeness of random strangers and "because I said so" is no reason whatsoever. But they were yelling across 1/8 mile of snowy park, and my, I felt better for yelling. The downfall of society, that's me. Last I saw, the girl was moving, as if dragging a large dead tree behind her, in the general direction of her incompetent mater.
Thank you, Beth, for telling me the tag to make images work.
Precor Elliptical, 30' @ 12/20 resistance and 20/20 incline.
I was shocked, yes. Two weeks since I've been to the gym.
Tex and I went to the gym today. Midday is a great time for me to exercise, motivation- and energy-wise, but to go, exercise, and return in an hour is tricky. Also it will only last until it warms up, because I have never spent summer lunch hours inside unless it's blazing hot or pouring wet. Also Tex is going to be out for two weeks.
25' Precor elliptical, 20/20 incline and 12/20 resistance.
2' arm-spinny upper-body workout thingie
Hacksquats, 1x12 and 2x10 @ 110.
Precor elliptical, 30' @ 20/20 incline and 13/20 resistance
I wanted to do 45' but at minute 29, someone began to wait for the several machines and a second person had joined him before 30'. I made him wait the minute and felt all self-righteous about the women next to me, who was at 39' but didn't leave.
Lat pull-down, 3x10 @ 80. I finally went up 10 pounds. From this machine I could see the 39'+-woman and the line of people waiting. She finally left during my
Tricep rope pull-downs, 3x10 @ 50--fifty instead of thirty because I was on the inside of the cage with two pulleys instead of one. I think.
Assisted pull-ups, 3x10 @ 40 (110 pounds of assistance)
Tricep arm extensions, 3x10 @ 50
Back extensions, 3x25
and
Precor elliptical, 15' @ 20/20 incline and 12/20 resistance
My strides per minute averaged over 125 the first time; in the second stint I didn't push myself past 110. The assisted pull-ups really beat me down.
But anyway, a good solid work-out for the first time in what, three weeks?
Precor Elliptical 45' @ 12/20 resistance and 20/20 incline, 5750 strides total. I got competitive with the fellow next to me, who held onto the handles and whose resistance was a fraction of mine. But we got on our machines at about the same time and eventually I noticed that he had a higher stride-per-minute rate than I. I might not have felt compelled to exceed him had he not been overweight (and wearing black socks). He left at 35' and I did my 45', plus 3' or so of cooldown.
Precor Elliptical, 20' @ 20/20 incline and 13/20 resistance. People who won't clear off after 20' when people are waiting (and the whole place is mirrored, you can see the line from any machine) continue to pis me off.
Weighted seated calf raises, 2x30 and 1x40 @ 90. Probably not enough lift. What the hell.
Leg presses, 3x12 @140. I haven't been doing weights (d'ya guess?)
Leg curls, 3x12 @ 70. Or maybe x10. I was impressed I could do so many before my knee hurt.
Hack squats, 3x5 @125. Five. I suck.
Leg extensions, 3x12 @ 70.
Lat pull downs, 3x15 @80. My lats are better.
Seated row, 3x15 @~75
Some other back machine.
Gorgeous ride this morning. My hands were a little cold in cotton glove liners under bike gloves, but my thin sweatshirt was fine. In the afternoon I sweated biking home but was still amply more comfortable than I had been in the office all day, since the heat was cranked.
Two 3.8-mile city rides, and I've got significantly faster.
Flexing! I love flexing when I do it. When I stop loving it, I don't do it. Meanwhile, it felt luxurious to leave today at 4:00 instead of at 4:30, and today didn't even feel like Thursday yet but not only was it Thursday it was also the last day of the week.
Two 3.8 mile city rides.
I typed "years" instead of "weeks" there because it really has felt that long.
One 3.8 mile city ride, then RDC picked me up after work and we went to the gym.
Precor Elliptical 30' 20/20 resistance and 12/20 incline, total strides 3800+. I should strive for 4000.
Bar lat pulldowns, 3x10 @80
Hammer Strength high row, 3x12 @ 100
Hammer Strength lat pulldown, 3x12 @ 80
Back extensions, 50
Seated weighted calf raises, 50 @ 55.
Two 3.8 mile city rides, and then later
Seated row, 3x12 @60
Tricep rope pull, 3x12 @20 (that pulley thing is weird. When I did 20, the pulley would pop and it'd be super easy; when I put the pin in 30, the pulley wouldn't pop and I could barely budge the rope)
Hack squats, 3x10 @120
Iso Lat pull downs, 3x12 @75
Something that used different and more back muscles, 3x12 @100
50 back extensions
Whatever isolated muscle at the top of the shoulder, 1x10 @30 and then to exhaustion (maybe eight) at 20.
Two 3.8 mile city rides through a neighborhood packed with lilac. And it's a damper spring, so their perfume is much stronger. It's wonderful.
30' elliptical on the handly machine.
Lat pull-downs, 3x12 @ 70
Upright row, 3x12 @ 75
Something that should be good for my wingspan, arms out and then back, 3x12 @25
Back extensions, 75
Two 3.8-mile city rides, the lilacs nearly over. Tomorrow night is the Botanic Garden's plant sale, and I might go just to spend some time amongst the several varieties of lilacs.
To paraphrase Kymm, apparently I am made of sugar and will melt, because RDC picked me up out of the freezing rain today. He offered.
One 3.8-mile city ride.
Two 3.8-mile city rides.
I am taking my life in my hands to commute by bike, even over established, signposted bike routes. Denver's particular driving quirk is to run red lights--to keep going straight through the yellow, so that people waiting to turn left do so on the red, on the mutual red and even against the opposing's green. I know to watch for that.
I don't expect cars to come to full stops at stop signs, especially in residential areas like those the bike routes go through. I don't rely on blinkers. I am shocked--still--by how many people look left when turning right on red, for cars on the road they're turning into, but not right, where a cyclist might be waiting. And if the light turns green in that time, so that the straight-going traffic (including the bike that's been there longer than the right-turning car that didn't even see it as the driver approached the intersection) has the right of way, the driver will turn.
Making eye contact is critical.
Nearly a gale blowing during my ride home, which made it fun. Lots of blinding dust.
Two 3.8-mile city rides.
Here, an exclamation. I went to the gym.
I didn't ask the clerk to tell me my last time, which I'm sure the monitor indicated. Some time in March, I figure. No, I went sporadically in April and as recently as 4 May.
Handled elliptical thingie, 20' level 12.
Lat pull down, 3x10 @ 120. How can that be right? I was using a Hammer Strength machine instead of a bar in the cage, but I haven't lifted weights at all for a month or seriously for longer than that. Am I confusing this with the high row? But I always could pull down more than I could row. Yard work and biking cannot have done that. But I am sure of my weights: I know there were two 45-pound disks to start and I added a single 25er to one side and two 10s and a five to the other.
High row, 3x10 @ 90. Or so.
Hack squats, 3x10 @ 130. This surprised me at the time, but not as much as the lat pull-down weight does. Can biking have helped that much? It's 10 pounds more than I could do a month ago.
Leg curls, 3x12 @ 50. That's gone down by 20 pounds, and that makes sense.
Weighted back extensions, to exhaustion at increasing weight, topping out over 100 pounds.
Shoulder presses, something like 25 pounds.
Then I swam .6K. This is the first year since I started I have not swum outside before my birthday. At least it was before June, though barely. It was inside, but not to swim is more sacrilegious than to swim inside. Even in an indoor pool without windows.
A pleasure-ride, through the neighborhood to Cherry Creek North for gelato, down the Cherry Creek Trail to Confluence Park to watch the kayakers (who are, as far as I can tell, suicidal in two ways, immediate and long-term: immediate because the white water flips them and sometimes they have to pop themselves out of their aprons if they can't roll fast enough, and long-term because ack, the South Platte?), and downstream, north along the river for a bit to the "new urban development" up there, and across 16th Avenue and home.
I met two Papillon dogs, Bailey and Bingo. "Bailey," besides being way overused, sadly for humans as well as for dogs, is for bigger dogs. In my opinion. They were very sweet and, being so little, could not beg for gelato very effectively, even with their paws on my knees. At the riverfront we met a seven-month-old Australian shepherd named Bob. Female, but not named for Blackadder's Bob. Possibly because her tail was docked.
Two 3.8-mile city rides. I unearthed my 14.5-year-old long-sleeved white t-shirt from the Gap, which had been missing for over a year, and wore it today: perfect. Too cold for a regular t-shirt, not cold enough for a thin sweatshirt. Ha.
Precor Elliptical, 20' @ resistance 12/20 and incline 20/20.
Iso Lat Pull-down, 3x12 @90
Leg Presses, 3x12 @160: finally, more than my body weight
Seated Weight Calf Raises, 3x12 @60.
Lateral Raises, 3x12 @30. This is a weird one. There should exist a machine with more resistance at the beginning of the movement than at the end. And I move the weight with my forearms against the pads, but there are also handles, and I can lift more when I hold the handles. Unfortunately my wrist always winds up bent 90 degrees, and that can't be good.
Weighted back extensions, lots and lots @90.
Two 3.8-mile city rides, the homeward again in a stiff wind, at least until I gained the shelter of the residential, tree-filled areas.
Now, this is summer. Minne, who's lived in Denver three times, or four, as long as I have, says that this is summer as it's meant to be: hot but not unendurable (of course it's only June, and only beginning to hot up), with dependable afternoon storms.
I am really liking Denver this year.
Two 3.8-mile city rides.
I've wondered, over the past few days, why a house had chain-link fence around it. I discovered on the way home because it was barely there any more. It was only a 50s ranch without particular personality, but I'll be curious to see what goes up in its place.
I mistook the time and arrove at noon, but the pool wouldn't open until 1:15. So I sat and read We for over an hour before swimming only .5K, because I'd been away from the ball and chain long enough. It's such a short ride the bikeage doesn't count.
16 miles, not technical though gravel and hairpin turns made things a little interesting, at 8,000 feet.
God it was beautiful. I was talking to my notstepmother on the phone as RDC and I sped west toward the foothills, which is the only thing that kept me from shouting with joy. The foothills, glory be, were green! Green green green, not brown. Green, such a lovely color.
The north-facing slopes were greener, but even the sun-blasted south-facing slopes had grasses and flowers on them, and the trees, for the first time in three years, had enough water to put out softly, brightly green buds on their tips. Berthoud Pass still had lovely quantities of snow on its peaks, and the north-facing slopes still had snow quite far down the mountainsides--well below the treeline, in the shelter of the pines. Last year at the end of June when we drove to Steamboat Springs, the state was already on fire in some bits and blowing into dust in other bits. As far as I know the reservoirs aren't full yet but I doubt if we passed Green Mountain Reservoir this year that we'd pass through a dust storm like last year's.
Last weekend we gave someone the basic introduction to Rocky Mountain National Park, and I was hoping, for the first weekend in June, that Moraine Park would be as filled with wildflowers as it's reputed to be. But not yet.
Today, in contrast, the Fraser River valley was a riot of color. We biked the Fraser-Granby trail, a lovely, easy ride, with some hills, some slopes, some up, some down, for me a perfect little tour. Lots of dandelions of course, lots of richly blue larkspur, something that looked like snow-in-summer but denser and lower and whiter though without the silvery-gray foliage, relatives of a daisy, several interesting little low mounds with yellow flowers tight to the ground and leaves above. Just gorgeous.
Riparian meadows, actually flowing water in streams and creeks, horses, lodgepole pine forests smelling of vanilla, century-old broken-down cabins, mountain bluebirds, quantities of swallows, and the most beautiful fox I have ever seen--not that I've seen many or had a long look at any--stippled grey and red with an enormous white tip to its tail.
And, despite the perfection of the day, furthering that perfection, we encountered but seven other cyclists the whole way.
Two 3.8-mile rides, with enough thunder and lightning that evening lap swim was canceled. Tomorrow summer is supposed to arrive, right on time, and with it dryness so hopefully fewer canceled swims.
One of the reasons the house is falling into a swamp is improper drainage. Today I took the first step in correcting that by receiving five cubic yards, 2.5 tons, of dirt, tipped into the street against the curb in front of the house.
Now then. The city pools close in the middle of August when the lifeguards go back to school but the pools do not open in the middle of May when they leave school. Why? It's a mystery. No, they open in mid-June--last Saturday to be precise. I swam Saturday, we went mountain-biking Sunday, and then Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, the only post-work lap swim times, there were thunderstorms (or at least a tiny little smidge of rain three miles away that we had to be protected from) so swim was canceled.
So today I was all stoked for a noon swim--there is a noon lap swim every day, although the adults who want lapswim generally have jobs that prevent their taking advantage of it, and why do I live in the land o' no lakes again?--so after the dirt's 11:15 arrival I barrowed only three loads from the great big pile before biking over to the pool.
The great big piercing blue sky that Denver generally has all day clouded up fast as the dozens of littl'uns vacated the general swim. In ten minutes the overcast was complete. I swam .7K before we were whistled out, and for goodness sake, a thunderstorm in the middle of the day? That just doesn't happen here. I shucked my suit, regained my shorts and (white) tank top, Tevas and sandals, and biked home as fast as I could through pouring rain, gusty winds, and maybe some thunder and lightning.
My great big pile of dirt in the street wanted to swim away already. Denver might not get a lot of rain, but it really enjoys its downpours. I grabbed tarps from the lasagne mulch in back, from over the leaf pile, from under the brush pile. I dug a trench through the dirt for the lake that already had formed on the upstream side to drain. I hastily reattached all the long gutters that're supposed to divert the water from leaking into the basement--those I'd removed that morning so the wheelbarrow could get through.
I dashed into the house to swap sunglasses for contact lenses and sopping wet white--though muddy--tank top for something more practical and opaque. Just as I emerged, the rain, true to Denver form, dripped to a halt. It's rain, and I cannot resent it. But I maybe did give the sky the stink-eye a couple of times.
So my next barrow loads were of mud as I tried to buttress the pile from further erosion. My gloves were soaked from the lake and the stream and the ditch, so I shucked them. But when my shorts had got so filthy I could no longer wipe the mud onto them for a better purchase on shovel or wheelbarrow, I gave up.
I broke for dry clothes and a sandwich over a few minutes of "Sense and Sensibility." I have really worn a groove in it--it crashed twice and I restarted Moondshadow, taking that as my hint to get back to work. Twice more in the afternoon, thunderstorms passed through, though only with showers, and I took the second rain as a signal to stop for the day.
So here I am, in warm sunlight, on my porch swing, listening to Crosby Still & Nash and now the Waterboys, eating cherries, and not reading The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony.
I am loving this summer.
I had shoveled and barrowed enough to be tired when I got to the pool; I did two laps with a kickboard and one of sidestroke in the slowest lanes, among the vastly pregnant and the old and the abbreviated before finding my stride. That lost my time so I did only 16 laps altogether instead of 20, one mile instead of 2 K. But it was a glorious day, a wonderful swim, right for the first day of summer.
2.1K in one hour! I know normal people can swim faster than that but I've been getting a mile in lately, though I think this might have been the first time the lifeguards actually allowed a full hour. Usually they don't rope off the lanes until the lapswim hour has started.
Two 3.8-mile city rides and a 1.7K swim (and another twoish miles to the pool and back).
Two 3.8-mile city rides. 94 degrees, though maybe less at 4:00. I miss fireflies, but we also don't have deerflies that feast on joggers. I miss peepers but not the bugs the peepers live on. 94F is brutal in New England, but here's it's just damn hot. Here, sweat works. I do have a sweat rash on the underside of one breast. In an ideal world, no body part would touch another: no buttcheek overhanging the thigh, no breast touching the ribcage. Heat and friction are not so enjoyable in this context.
45' elliptical, incline 20 (does that mean 20%? it's as inclined as the machine goes), resistance mostly 12 but sometimes 10 or 11 out of 20. Total strides, uh, over 5600. It felt good. I did not afterward swim at noon. I thought I might go and play at the city pool, after some yardwork, in the later afternoon.
I think the pool was a few minutes late opening, but in the near-hour alloted I swam 1.4K.
One point four kilometers, OMFB. A woman in her 60s or maybe 50s passed me. She was wearing flippers, true, and she also passed a man in our lane probably ten years younger than I with much broader shoulders and a much trimmer waist than mine, but still.
One point four. I suck.
At one o'clock someone shouted everyone out of the pool, and those who had any idea of what time it was protested. We were shouted out again, so I turned around, hence the .05 lap. Lifeguards unhooked and began to wind up the ropes, with swimmers still protesting, and I picked up my pannier and helmet and towel and headed out. When I passed the lifeguard, he called, "Okay, sorry, go until 1:05 [the listed time] then." By this time, it was 1:03 and the ropes whipped snakily through the pool. Yeah, excellent for lap swimming. I would love for the pool to be staffed by anyone who didn't hate everyone over the age of 19.
1.85 K
It is certainly not among my best beloved characteristics how immediately the whims of my mood affect everything. I was in a woebegone mood this noon and knew it, so I just paddled casually.
1.5K
Two 3.8-mile city rides.
I rode through a damn sandblaster on the way home. A thunderstorm loomed thunderily in the northeast and another to the south, and me in the middle, I battled scouringly, searingly hot winds all the way home. Lordy.
Mm. In late June, I did 2.1K? That's according to me. Today I definitely did. All of these lapswim times are 60 minutes, incidentally. I looked at 2000 and 2002 distances, and they're about the same. I thought, this year, that I had slowed. Apparently not. Twenty-one hundred meters, O My Friends and Brothers and Future Biographers, I am quite relieved. I thought I was having a casual enough swim, pausing a couple of times my goggles or treading water while someone passed me, but I was concentrating on extending my body, on pulling through my torso, on using my abdominal strength, such as it is, to do whatever it is it does.
Also two 3.8-mile city rides.
1.3K
For the last week of its season, the pool--perhaps all city pools, but I should check, maybe Cook is merciful--closes at 5. No afternoon lap swim. A small sign announces this, also that the pool will be open for lap swim from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. (post instead of ante would make me so happy). At 7:00 a.m., it's 60 degrees out; at 5:00, it's generally still over 90. Hm.
Well, I can swim in cold water if the day is hot. Here at least the water will be warmer than the air.
And it's the last outdoor afternoon swim of the city's year. Not, mercifully, of my year.
2.2K. I know when I casually do 1.4 or even 1.6, that's much less than I can do. But 2.2K is an exceptional lot for me to accomplish. Having the pool emptier really does help.
I do occasionally bike to work even when RDC isn't home (for discipline and to need the car himself) but it's so easy to make excuses to drive when he's gone: it makes for a shorter day for Blake, I can run errands during lunch instead of after work (again less alone-time for Blake), and, uh, I probably had others.
Last Saturday, the 2nd, leaving the pool after my swim, I detoured around the construction not the marked way but my own, shorter, way, apparently through a nest of those thorny thingies. Do I know how to change my own tubes? I do not. So I drove Monday and Tuesday, RDC came home Tuesday, Wednesday I took the other bus route (a mile walk on one end and a half on the other: not bad, but going from cold to overheated bus to cold to overheated building is going to suck this winter), Thursday and Friday I had off. Sunday RDC, not I, changed the tubes, because patching the tubes would have required umpteen little patches.
I do know, in principle, how to do it, how to pop the tire off the rim, how to test the tube for punctures, how to apply a patch. I have just never actually done it. I ought to know how to do it, because, unlike changing a car's oil, a flat cannot be planned for and renders the vehicle useless until fixed. More than to know how to do it, I ought actually to do it. Next time (ha!)
Two 3.8-mile city rides.
Two 3.8-mile city rides.
Also,
Precor Elliptical, 20' at level 20 (100%) incline, resistance 12 (60%), with two 2-pound handweights for 15'. I have to go later at night so no one waiting compels me to obey the 20' limit.
Hack squats, 90 pounds, 3x12
Lat pull-downs, 70 pounds, 3x12
Back extensions, 50
I have never been into weights. But I must, must, must get into better shape, and that means resistance in addition to aerobic training.
Precor Elliptical, 45' at 60% resistance, 100% incline, about half the time with two 2-pound weights.
Precor Elliptical, 25', 12/20 resistance and 20/20 incline and two 2-pound handweights.
Then some weights. Some, as Baldrick would say, like "some beans."
Then ten laps of crawl. I don't remember if it's meters or yards, but it's 25 somethings long. So have a half k. RDC is swimming now too.
We arrove at the gym just before nine. In the morning. On a weekend. But I discovered--well, I must have read it on the schedule months ago but I didn't take it seriously because the hour of nine o'clock in the morning on a weekend doesn't exist outside of my own house--a 9:00 a.m. step class. I took a step class! I couldn't keep up sometimes because I didn't know the routine, not because I am in lousy shape. Or not necessarily because I'm in lousy shape. Also because of the unreal hour, it wasn't as crowded as the evening classes. Let's hope this becomes a regular thing.
Two 3.8-mile city rides. This morning, a truck turned right on no-longer-red without noticing that the light's having turned green meant that the cyclist going straight in the crosswalk had the right of way.
Two 3.8-mile city rides.
Later, actual exercise, two 20-minute stints on an Precor EFX elliptical, 5' warm-up, 35' at 20/20 incline and 12- or 13/20 resistance, 15' with two 2-pound handweights, and then 3' cooldown.
Back extensions, except not because while my sore hip made itself obvious during the elliptical, it hurt doing this.
Ab crunches on a weight machine, 100 x 75 pounds.
Not that this dress would have been appropriate for Sunday anyway, since it wasn't quite warm enough, but I could not zip a dress I bought in fucking July. I wore it, it's white linen so I dry-cleaned it, and Sunday I could, in fact, zip it, but it was obviously (to me) too tight. RDC disagreed and said that dry-cleaning can shrink things, and I don't know if that's true but it's why I keep him around, but I cannot have expanded in volume that much in two months. Can I have? Everything else that I bought in July still fits--including the Perfect Skirt and the closely-fitting pants with the silent s. Grr.
The Perfect Skirt is nearly perfect despite the middle seam down the front. This dress's seaming was hard to tell from the picture on the J. Crew sales site, and its center seam was nearly enough for me to return it. Now if I return it it will be because I'm inflated and therefore not allowed (and immoral, and probably impossible since it was an end-of-season)
Two 3.8-mile city rides for the first time since last Thursday.
The excuse: with RDC away, less time away from Blake. The real reason: laziness. Also, Friday I brought RDC to the airport, Monday I took off entirely for medical appointments (five hours for two), laziness for four days, and Monday I made another airport run.
For the first time, since it was below freezing, I wore my new gloves, which are warm (unlike the thin glove liners I wore under ordinary fingerless bike gloves last week), snugger than any other glove I would otherwise tolerate, that, because snug, permit full functionality for brake and gear levers. (I brought regular gloves for the afternoon ride.)
Down 7th, lined with elms, past the Engagement Square of Sidewalk, to the Cherry Creek trail, down the Creek to Confluence Park, up the South Platte to Mile High stadium (I might be breaking the law by not calling it Invesco Field at Mile High), back up the left bank and up the creek again to a detour at Downing so through the country club neighborhood to Cherry Creek North and large cones of sorbeto from the gelato place and home again, jiggety jig.
Precor Elliptical, 10' at 20/20 incline and 12/20 resistance.
Then leg weights to the point of wobbliness. Hacksquats, leg presses, leg curls, leg extensions, the one where you lie prone and curl the leg, seated weighted calf raises, and some other damn thing for hamstrings, all worked to exhaustion at one weight and then to exhaustion at gradually lower weights.
When I kissed RDC goodbye this morning I told him I left him a present outside the house. He clearly could not think what this might be. He asked, "Front or back?" I told him it was outside any window he wanted to look out of. "It snowed?" I nodded. "It was 80 yesterday." I nodded again, even though it was only 75, sunny, powerfully windy with Chinooks, and dry enough for three fires, two visible from the city.
Yet I rode anyway, OMFB. It was 29 when I got up at 6:30 and 27 when I left an hour later. I wore shorts and a thin sweatshirt and my new gloves and I was fine. Later, at my desk in tights and a skirt (the worst suffering of the morning being the donning of tights over just-showered skin), my thighs itched and tingled as the blood warmed them.
Two 3.8-mile city rides.
Two 3.8-mile city rides. Even just that slight amount of exercise improves my outlook considerable-like.
Precor Elliptical 30', 20/20 incline, 12/20 resistance. Three whole minutes with two 2-pound handweights. I had intended 45' but that wasn't going to happen after the weights, when my strides per minute dropped from the high 120s to 108-110.
One length of the gym in lunges, and I restrained the left hamstring that hurt for a whole week after the weights fiasco of two weeks ago. That's why I was doing lunges, figuring I'd let the weights be for a bit yet.
Ten push-ups. Ten, OMFB. The two-minute plank hold from last winter? No more.
Bah.
Gw'on, guess: two 3.8-mile city rides.
Besides that it's a slurred utterance and not a word, how is that version of "go on" properly transcribed? It needs the w, though there's none is the phrase. Hm.
One 3.8-mile ride, and another that got me home but had two detours and was undertaken in gale-force winds. Whoosh.
Precor Elliptical, 20', 3' at 11/20 resistance and 18/20 incline, 3' at 11/20 and 20/20, 14' at 12/20 and two of those with two 2-pound handweights.
Two lengths of the gym in lunges, and I didn't feel a sudden pop in my hamstring.
Twenty-five back extensions and a few plank-holds at a total of under two minutes.
Hey, I went. That's all I count right now.
Two 3.8-mile city rides.
I stayed after work a little bit, just fifteen minutes, but that will make a lot of difference in a month. I think I know where my headlamp is. Maybe.
Nordic Track: 20', 2.3 miles, while watching "Sex and the City." Much easier than going to the gym in January (not that I was battering the door down). Then some twists on the ball for my obliques.
Nordic Track: 20', distance 2.54, calories (allegedly) 312
I don't count the one, half, half, and one mile walks the bus ride entails. I might count the morning mile, because my heart rate does rise, but I don't (yet) because it's piddling.
I walked the four miles to work because I missed the bus that would have carried me the middle 2.5 miles. It was a lovely walk through two inches of fresh snow.
Yea! Back on my bike! It's been light enough for a few weeks, but my difficulties were stretches of road on the north side of buildings, still snowy and icy despite warm days, and temperatures below 20.
Two 3.8-mile city rides
I have not been on my bike in two months. I need to toughen up my tender biking parts. Two 3.8-mile city rides.
Two 3.8-mile city rides. Somehow I forgot to put on my helmet when I left work and to notice until I got home, when its absence interrupted the automatic shedding of helmet and gloves. I'm in a quandary about how to get to work on Monday. I'll be aware of its absence and therefore in a lot more danger over the exact same route than I was today.
Two 3.8-mile city rides. And my legs just needed to wake up after their two months bus-walking: now I am back into my regular gears. Now the point will be to continue spinning in yet higher gears.
Two 3.8-mile city rides.
Also, I saw my first robin. Denver has robins throughout the winter, but I've read that our winter robins come south from Canada, while our summer robins winter in Mexico or wherever. This was the first robin I've seen in my own yard this year, and therefore I count today as the first day of spring.
Two 3.8-mile city rides. In the morning I met another dog named Howie, this one adorable mostly because it was a five-month-old puppy, but fated by its all-too-common breed to be merely an ordinary dog in adulthood, whereas my coworker's Howie will always be cute, because a basset hound-dalmatian cross is just not something you see every day. Poor ordinary golden retrievers.
This one was cute while it lasted, of course. Passing its human and it as they walked, the puppy holding a stick in its mouth and prancing with delight, I called, "What a good stick! There's nothing like a good stick!" The human grinned and waved, and then they joined me as we waited for a light to change, where I learned his name and age and had my knee and paniers thoroughly investigated and got to pet some puppy ears.
On a recent commute I saw my friend and her Howie as they walked. She was on the phone with her mother so my cries of "Hi Mom!" and "Bye Mom!" bookended my fondling Howie's ears and kissing his goofy snout. The next day at work I apologized for invading her phone call and hoped her mother could understand how necessary it is to snuffle Howie whenever possible. Of course she could.
And that's why bike commuting is good: no one driving a car greets or smiles at strangers in other cars or waves at the old man walking his Highland terrier or the two elderly women on their morning constitutional or the young woman waiting at the bus stop or the fellow walking home from the coffee shop; but these are all my regular acquaintance now.
Precor Elliptical: 22'30", 12'30" with two 2-pound weights, warming up to 20/20 incline and 12/20 resistance.
Recline bike, 10' @ level 12.
Hack squats, 3x12 @ 90
Seated weighted calf press, 25 @ 45
Lat pull, 3x10 @ 60 (used to be 70, what a surprise that it's less)
Upright row, 3x16 @ 30
Back extensions to exhaustion
Rotary shoulders, almost none at almost nothing. Jeepers.
Lots of stretching.