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.
I'm going to feel it tomorrow.
One 3.8-mile city ride. RDC picked me up because it was rainy and cold. Also because CoolBoss and Minne gave me a hanging basket full of potted purple pansies for NotSecretary's Day.
Precor Elliptical, 30'; 15' with two 2-lb. handweights, keeping my strides per minute >120 and often >130.
Ten minutes rowing, 30 strokes per minute. I think.
Two 3.8-mile city rides. On the way in I did my Michael Jackson impression because the left glove I hoped might be in the car (when it wasn't in my helmet where it belongs) wasn't. I had left it in the shower room at work, so at least it wasn't lost.
Two 3.8-mile city rides, and only the second week in the 18 months I have commuted all five days under my own power. I haven't driven all five days very often either, but at least one day a week a lot more often than I ought, especially this winter, with my bus route canceled.
Two 3.8-mile city rides, despite the best effort of an oblivious driver in the morning who all-too-clearly assumed there could not possibly be more than the one person so unAmerican as to travel otherwise than by car--the pedestrian she had stopped for--and therefore nearly ran me down. Maybe I should have been an opera singer, since I can yell so loud.
Two 3.8-mile city rides.
Having clips completely changes the way I ride. I still do a lot of pushing, because 30 years of pedal-pushing is a hard habit to break. And I'm not good at pushing with one foot while pulling with the other. But I'm getting better at pulling, and it's amazing how much more easily I can pedal faster and harder while pulling than while pushing.
It's the most gorgeous weather: perfectly sunny, perfectly clear, warm in the sun, cool in the near-constant, strong winds. Like September at my beach.
We left intending Golden Gate State Park, but as soon as we were on Colfax with a clear view of the west and the towering front, we aimed instead for our stretch of the Highline Canal. We saw kestrels and killdeer and western kingbirds and magpies, the last of which have been conspicuously absent in our neighborhood this spring, which makes me sad.
5.2 miles.
Another thing I don't get: indoor pools with no natural daylight, though that doesn't stop me from using one.
The sort of elliptical with handles, 20'.
Recumbent bike, 5' cooldown.
Freestyle, but I didn't count 25m laps. About 30'.
Two 3.8-mile city rides.
That I survived was no thanks to one particular driver. I am used to the city buses taking no notice of red lights. They go through lights so red they're brown--with the perpendicular direction's green. So this morning when I got the green to go east, I waited for the southbound bus to blow the light before proceeding. Then a northbound car also blew the light to turn left and westward. I figured--stupidly, maybe--that that was the last of the lightblowers, so I was well into the intersection when another northbound car blew the light to turn left and westward--despite me going east and westbound drivers going straight who could evade it and westbound drivers turning south, who could not.
At the other hairy intersection, another car waited to turn left but not did blow the light to do so. It even backed up, out of the intersection and behind crosswalk, when it realized it couldn't make its turn.
Both were single-occupancy vehicles wanting to turn left at an expired green. In ascending order of stereotyped stupid driving, the one that went for it had a male driver, was a minivan, and the driver held a cell phone to his ear. The other, who anticipated but cleared the intersection, was a woman driving a Saab without a handheld cell phone. Also, the minivan certainly had an automatic transmission while the Saab could possibly have been standard.
I was going to channel Yosemite Sam and say "Grrr, I hate rabbits," but I am still under the beech hangar on Watership Down so I won't.
We changed our gym membership. 24 Hour Fitness is full of lines, I didn't feel comfortable locking my bike outside it, and its indoor pool has no daylight.
Gym Foofy is just a couple of blocks farther away. It's on a side street and its bike rack is immediately outside its glass doors with members walking in and out instead of in front of a concrete wall with almost no pedestrians and a lot of automobiles. So I can bike to it after work, with sneakers in my panniers.
Gym Foofy vows you never have to wait for equipment, which means that RDC and I can go together in the evenings, as we originally plotted at 24. Even after the New Year's mob (of which we were part) thinned out, evenings were a bad time to go. He would go during the day when he could schedule a free hour, and I would not go in the evenings because it was packed and I could not ride on the coattails of his discipline.
Gym Foofy has an outdoor pool, heated and open from April 1st through October 31st, for lap swim, and another outdoor pool for leisure and children, and an indoor pool with big windows. It is a 25-meter pool, rather than Congress Park's 50, but I was happy enough in Cook Park's 25 and I lost a lot more time to crowding than I will to twice as many of my inefficient turns.
Gym Foofy also costs twice as much. It provides towels, which is nice, and Q-tips, which is insane. But I can swim outdoors for six months out of the year instead of eight weeks at the city pools, not in such restrained times (all of them have the same lap swim hours, of which I could make four a week), not in such filthy water, and I can ride my bike.
Next year, supposedly a 24 will open within walking distance of Dot Org out here in the hinterlands. At that point, I will have to make a decision: if I am still going to Gym Foofy, I will allow me to keep my membership; if I am not, better waste less money at 24 where transportation won't be an issue again than at Foofy. That's good motivation to go to Foofy.
Precor Elliptical 30', and I have a complimentary meeting with a personal trainer next week.
Precor Elliptical (a newer model with a smoother stride), 45' at 20/20 incline and 8/20 resistance, about 6K strides. I changed machines at 15' when the one to my left became free so I could read captions on CNN more easily, so I'm not sure. I used two 2-pound handweights nearly throughout. Every five minutes or so I'd check my heartrate through the sensors the handles: 160 rpm, above both the purported "fat-burning" and "cardio training" ranges, but I didn't feel strained. For a couple of periods I dropped the weights and pushed my strides-per-minute above 175 instead of my average of 130-135, and that's what I should do. That challenged me aerobically as my usual efforts do not.
Then I swam a half-mile, even though thunder in the distance probably had closed city pools. Ha.
Swam 1 k, including one whole length of butterfly, ooooo. I have got to learn how to do a flip-turn. My non-regulation turns totally disrupt my rhythm--although that's hardly why I cannot do more than one lenght of fly.
One 3.8-mile city ride. It rained again today, but not during my commuting times; nevertheless, RDC picked me up and we went to the gym.
Precor Elliptical EFX 546: 45' at 20/20 incline and 8/20 resistance, 6000 strides. I used two 3-pound handweights for about a third of the period.
The weather that, I realize, I am far too accustomed to has returned. After a week of welcome rain, mist, and humidity, and continual thunderstorms, our clear blue skies are back. This morning's ride was chilly for June at 40 degrees, but by noon the weather was perfect: 70 degrees with a cool moist breeze; Kal and I sat on the patio and basked, her with a New Yorker and me with an Economist and Portrait of a Lady (at which I have chuckled a couple of times, not necessarily when James planned me to but still). I'm not sure about her but I'm not fond of a hot sun. This was perfect.
Yet no one listened when I requested that the new building have a retractable roof. True, I only asked for this when I learned that I would be on the third floor, and I have also asked for Bathrobe Day and petitioned for Pet Year. But still.
I biked to the gym and swam a kilometer plus a few lengths of fly alternating with side- or backstroke so I could breathe. I am also working on kicking from my abs, which are flobby.
Something more than two 3.8-mile city rides, and a 1K crawl.
And I biked home totally happy. When I am not exercising, I forget just how profound an effect exercise and activity have on my mood. I must not let myself forget.
Two bike commutes. Once when I drove home mid-morning, it took me less than eight minutes. Today for the first time I biked that route. It involves a diagonal street--a rarity in Denver--one that is not marked as a bike route. It is less pleasant, but much faster. I have to drive it again with the triptometer to see how much shorter.
A three-legged commute from home to work to gym to home. For now I'll call it eight miles, figuring that the diagonal cuts off a lot.
At the gym I swam, or traveled, 2.05K. Fiften of my 21 laps were with a kickboard, and five of them were dolphin kicks for butterfly. I have never worked on my kicks or (strokes? is that what the arm movement is called?) much, not since college. Also, not being a technically proficient swimmer, I seldom swim anywhere near my aerobic capacity because of that breathing thing.
Two laps of dolphin kick had me gasping. I did another two of regular scissor, really concentrating on my core and trying to kick from above my hips. I would dolphin until my muscles were so exhausted I couldn't hold my legs together and got even sloppier, and then I would scissor or give up the board and crawl. It was a fine workout.
On the way home I saw something, let out a cry, jumped off Shadowfax, and hurled myself in the direction of Tia, an eight-week-old English Mastiff puppy who just came home last night. She has two older siblings, a cocker spaniel and a rat terrier (so no wonder the man wanted a real dog), and I would love to see that interaction as she burgeons to her anticipated weight of 150 pounds. Her human let me hold her, and she kissed me all over the face and put a paw against my neck with considerable force and let me feel her buttery soft paws and fondle her ears and stroke her nose and what an adorable dog. Her sire fathered the largest dog ever in North America at 295 pounds, and while such dogs of course have an abbreviated life expectancy and probably a messed up phyisology, the cute is considerable. Especially now, before the drooling. I was so in love.
Then I stopped at the newish Starbucks in my neighborhood, because last night with Kal I discovered that they just bag their grounds and set them out instead of needing to be called and asked and then reminded when I show up at the agreed-upon time, unlike the other Starbucks I've used.
It was a good bike ride.
6.3 miles home to work to gym plus the leg I didn't measure of my commute, from gym to home. Whatever, I'll get to it.
Then, 20' on an elliptical with handles, one I was unfamiliar with. I choose the "cardio" program and set my maximum heartrate to 160 bpm and while I could breathe easily throughout, occasionally the resistance spiked to a point I could not push or pedal.
Then I had my complimentary gym session with a trainer. I learned some new exercises to do with a ball and handweights, but my problem is not ignorance of what I ought to do but actually doing it.
Lifeguards chased me from the pool at .6K for lightning and I finished the K in the indoor pool. This is 20-meter pool instead of the outdoor 25-, and is much warmer. The outdoor water is 80 degrees, insanely warm; I didn't see a thermometer in the indoor but it felt close to blood heat, which was probably because of contrast.
As I left it was sprinkling, and as I crossed Colorado Boulevard the sprinkling because rain. I debated waiting it out in the mall or the Tattered Cover but pressed on, and as soon as I veered north toward home the skies opened.
It was a terrific ride. The rain was even warm. I paused under a maple to tuck my iPod into my shell, which I do carry but disdained to wear. Thunder sounded a lot farther away than would excite my concern--I wouldn't have chased me out of the pool--and my shoes didn't get soaked through until about three blocks from home.
Eight plus miles of city ride and 1K freestyle.
I fought with a fitball for 3x9 hamstring curls. I am not sure I'm working my hamstrings as much as my utterly nonexistent abdominal muscles. I have a serious paunch going, as if I had borne about 18 children.
Then Precor Elliptical, 30' of an alleged weightloss program and 15' manual. The machine claimed more than 600 total calories burned, and fewer strides than when 45' all manual. Also I used two 5-pound handweights, though not for the whole 45'. And my heartrate ranged around 135 bpm, which might officially be in the "fat-burning zone" but it doesn't feel like much.
I cooled down on a treadmill, a 15% incline and 3 mph, intending to walk until my heartrate was under 100 bpm, but what the hell, after 5' I threw in the towel. I finished with as many crunches on the squishy disk--there has to be a name for that--as I could manage, which wasn't many.
And then I soaked in the whirlpool with The Portrait of a Lady.
Two 3.6-mile city rides. I was going to swim after work but I realized as I put on my backpack that I didn't have my keys. I had left them in the outside of the back door, very clever and secure, so I couldn't lock my bike. I might have gone out afterward, but what the hell, I didn't.
Bike 8.6 miles. Swim 1K freestyle. I accomplished this in possibly in my fastest time ever because the club was closing at 5 for a Second of July party.
Freestyle 2K. Certainly I am faster in this pool, maybe because its being 25 meters means twice as many pushoffs but I am sure that not having to share a lane helps a great deal. Being able to keep straight over the line instead of having to circle means I don't steer into the rope nearly as often, especially with my strongly dominant right side.
But after 2K, my belly is sore. Perhaps I will eventually have abdominal muscles.
About seven miles of biking from home to gym to art fair to home to catsitting place and home again. Also a 2K freestyle.
Two 3.6-mile city rides.
Interestingly, and impossibly, I broke the cleat on my left shoe sometime between clipping in as I left work and attempting to unclip when I got home. Eventually I unlaced the shoe and removed myself from the bike that way. Vice grips and a crowbar loosed the shoe from the clip. With only one screw holding the cleat in place instead of two, I could twist the shoe in any dimension without levering the cleat off the pedal.
I suppose I usually unclip the right foot to lean away from the street. I could have found out in a much uglier manner than comically on my front sidewalk that I was laced instead of clipped onto my bike.
I swam two miles! For the first time since November 1999! Which might have been the first time ever, because I am not sure if I did it ever in college. First I thought about three kilometers, but two miles is only four laps more. Also I thought I would do 2.2 first and the last k after a break, but I know myself better than that: I wouldn't go back. Two miles!
Swim 2K.
I am so proud of myself. I tried to talk myself out of it but I went anyway, and I tried to talk myself into only 1000 meters and then 1500 but I did 2000.
One of the things Shrink and I talk about is my motivation and my shoot-self-in-foot-ism (N.B.: this is my term, not hers). Here is an instance where I did not! Go me.
Earlier in the week, RDC being away meant that Blake's long days brought me home without swimming. Wednesday it stormed. So today was my first 1K in a week.
Another two-mile swim! It took me 75 minutes, which is a good time for me. Twenty-five minutes is a good time for 1000 meters to begin with, so 25 minutes for 3 kilometers (and another 200 meters) is a pace I'm pleased with. I should look up what is an athletic pace for an enthusiastic 36-year-old should be.
We spent about four hours at the club. I swam straightaway so I wouldn't make excuses for myself or have time to do only 2K or 1. Then I changed from my swim suit (high-neck, low-hipped, one-piece in which I pretend I am Natalie Coughlin) into my bathing suit (high but not as high, two-piece "tankini") and lay out. I listened to The Odyssey (I'm at my 13-year-old self's favorite spot: Odysseus's calling himself Noman and secreting himself in the fleecy underside of a sheep in the Cyclops's lair) and lay there pulling the neck of my suit down from mid-breastbone to sun a vee of cleavage while wearing a wide-brimmed hat and tucking a towel around my hips.
The world will have to deal with an imperfectly skin-cancered moi, though. Soon enough I moved under a tree. But I kept the hat on. And I finished All the King's Men.
Over breakfast I said something about powerwashing the fence, but soon enough RDC suggested Golden Gate Canyon State Park. So that's what we did. As soon as we got up to Fraser Meadow, the skies opened. Instead of glugging water and chawing a Clif bar or two, we immediately turned around to get back under trees.
We saw a grouse of some sort who scampered along the path ahead of us for yards and yards before finally veering into the grass and up into an aspen. We also saw a garter snake and another garter snake and then a skittering across the trail, which RDC thought was another snake. It was a rabbit, not much more than a kitten. I tried to point out some differences between a snake and a bunny to RDC, but he pretended that he already could distinguish between them.
Also he called the garter snakes something I didn't initially listen to. He repeated, "Some people call them grass snakes, some people call them garter snakes."
"I call them a sling snake," I responded to his cadence. He for once agreed that that was funny.
3.6-mile hike.
Bike 8.3 miles in three legs and swim 750 meters. It rained only a little on the way home, mostly to show that it could and not really because it needed to.
Bike 8.3 miles in three legs and swim about a 1000 meters. Thunder and lightning began just as I meant to start my swim, so I swam inside, in the 20-meter pool. I didn't count laps then but did most with a kickboard, really trying to flutter-kick from my hips and dolphin kicking from my belly. After 20 minutes of rain, the sky cleared into blue cumulus perfection, and I crawled, breast-stroked, butterflied (one length), and side-stroked (tired now) to what I figured was a kilometer. My quadriceps ached and still do ache, and I took the homeward leg of bike quite slowly.
but I maybe didn't. A thousand meters more or less. I know I biked, two 3.6-mile city rides.
Two hours Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, 16-18 August. I am sure that my technique sucks but I had no problem steering and moving through flat water. We saw a bull moose and his little Ganymede friend. These kayaks inflate in less than five minutes and deflate faster yet. My "personal flotation device," because "life preserver" maybe makes a promise it can't always keep, is designed for people with breasts, hallelujah, and I can move easily in it. Kayaking! I'm a fan.
About three hours of yard work and a 1K swim.
I am working on breathing every other stroke instead of every one. Then means I inhale more deeply and exhale more thoroughly. I do notice an increase in aerobic exertion.
Bike 8.3 miles. Swim 1K.
This marks possibly only the second and certainly no more than the third week in the nearly two years at this building in which I have biked to work all five days.
Because I am that compulsive, I did check. Four such weeks in 2003 (and several four-day weks); five so far in 2004.
I last drove to work on 27 August, when it was raining. (I understand that this is not a good excuse.) It was reason enough for RDC to bring up again the possibility of a second car. Driving to work in order that afterward I can drive to the gym where I have to go because I'm not biking to work. It's going to be an issue when darkness falls before I've got out of the gym, which will coincide with the pool (with easily portable gear: suit and goggles) closing for the year. But one of the reasons to belong to Gym Foofy is that it has enough equipment that we can go together after work, with me walking and taking the bus and RDC picking me up at work to go to the gym or my biking to the gym to meet him there and shove the bike in the car afterward.
Walked 2.5 miles, then around and around and around with Trish and Jared at the Taste of Colorado.
Bike 8.3 miles and swim 2K.
Breathing every other stroke is almost natural now. I am sure I breathed too shallowly at every stroke. I did a few lengths at every third stroke, which is fine when I don't mind resting every lap.
I swam 500 meters. It was windy as hell and stormed later and I wasn't the only one who wimped out of my full swim.
Bike 3.6 miles and 30' elliptical.
RDC brought up the possibility of a second car, which would be a terrific convenience but a blow to my self-righteousness and conscience. Having said no, I had to walk the talk, or bike the talk. Forty-eight degrees is not cold, even when there's rain.
After work he picked me up and we went to the gym, leaving my bike at work. Kal's proximity means not only tomato-watering and kitty-feeding but carpooling. This, if it works (considering it would be unbalanced but for tanks of gas), would be just tremendous all winter long. It is awfully easy for me not to bike even when it's sunny and 25. Snow and ice on the ground is flat-out dangerous.
Precor Elliptical, 40', incline 20/20 (I still don't know the percentage), resistance 10/20 to 12/20. Warm up, 5' @ ~125 spm; work out 25" @ >130 spm; cool down 10' @ sufficient spm to average 130 spm overall.
Current goal, just to write it down: 20' sustained 150 spm.
Two 3.6-mile city rides.
I was going to swim this afternoon, really I was, but RDC called me at 3:42 to tell me that he had just nearly shut Blake's head in the closet door and was going to the vet. I stayed at work until 5:15, because working was better than biking or being home alone.
Immediately after the accident, Blake was hyperventilating, shaking his head, and huffing. Pain could have made him hyperventilate; he always shakes his head when he doesn't like something (being told no, the taste of icky food, loud unexpected noises); and he huffs when he's scared. His eyelids drooped on the ride down, until partway there, when he started chattering to things and acting more like himself.
I was about halfway home on my bike when RDC called me again. Dr. Vet looked into Blake's ears and eyes and saw no signs of trauma or bleeding. He said birds have tough skulls, for flying into things by accident (and maybe for rapping on things: sometimes Blake attacks a window with his beak as if he hoped the glass might be another big-horned ram). Blake perched on the previously terrifying scale-perch all by himself instead of having to be shut into the scale-basket like a hamster. He is 92 grams, which is a great weight for him (last year his 93 grams was "medium to medium-plus, which is fine," and I would rather he be "great" than fine, but can a gram make that much difference?).
I assembled a microwave cart while Blake chewed on interesting parts of a wheelie suitcase and put Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. 4 in a frame while Blake chewed on the faux poster insert. We all three had pasta for dinner and Blake ate two whole pieces of rotini. And now I'm watching "ER" and typing and petting buddy head.
I didn't swim, but Blake seems fine.That's all I need.
Bike 8.3 miles and swim 1250 meters. I was glad to be back in the water on such a gorgeous afternoon, and glad to be swimming, calm, methodical, back, forth, but I managed to get one of my headaches in the water, which is stupid.
Two 3.6-mile city rides. I improvised a way around the one actual hill without adding any mileage, I think. I will measure the next time I drive. Evidently I am all about reducing the exercise impact as much as possible.
I nearly stayed at work overnight--well, I stayed a whole hour late--because I so dreaded getting my overfed body back on the bike. But I managed.
Two 3.6-mile city rides.
Biking to the gym, I was thinking smugly about the climate, that in the morning I needed a thin sweatshirt and full gloves to bike to work but in the afternoon I could still swim (in an 78-degree pool) outside. And then I saw the chop on the water and considered the breeze I had combatted on the way, and stood on the second step and considered the water around my knees in the 60-degree air, and then gave up and swam my K in the indoor pool. I am concerned that swimming in 82-degree water all winter will do away with what facility I have left for cold water.
But this is a much nicer indoor pool than the Gollum's pool at 24-Hour Fitness: most of the west wall is glass, and skylights give light as well.
8.3 miles bike and 1K swim.
1K in the indoor pool.
It was so warm and lovely when I left work that I was sure I could swim outside, but without sun on the water the pool feels a lot colder. And I left work late then bought 120 pounds of black-oil sunflower seeds, so by the time I arrove, the sun had gone.
Two 3.6-mile city rides, the homeward one quite chilly and windy. A wonderful fall day.
Today's brown-bag was sixth season premiere of "The West Wing." I was stupid enough not to program the season pass into TiVo and was bereft when I realized, Wednesday evening at 9, that the show airs at 8 and I had just missed it. Besides having trivia contests about the state tree of Indiana, policy wonks are also likely to be "West Wing" aficionados. So today a bunch of us watched a merciful co-worker's tape.
I am not liking the looks of this season.
Precor Elliptical: 45', 5600 strides, just under 125 spm. A few bicep curls on the half-dome wiggly thing, whatever that's called, and not nearly one half of the way around the 1/12 mile track by lunging (I stopped as soon as I felt a hamstring).
In the morning I began The Shipping News but I was feeling waaay too depressed for it--the writing is bizarre without being inventive, the characters might have been better off drowned as kittens, and it reminds me of someone I miss, plus I wonder if my opinion can be separate from hers (probably not) and how pathetic that makes me (very, or call it loyal)--so I started Confederacy of Dunces instead. I read it in the whirlpool today, a little, and only a little because someone whom I first took as only annoying was TALKING AT THE OTHER WOMAN IN THE WHIRLPOOL EVEN THOUGH THE WHIRLPOOL WAS WHIRLING AND THERE'S A FAKE WATERFALL TOO AND THE ENTIRE SPACE IS, SURPRISE! TILED AND ECHOEY.
Then I took a shower, and when I came out the same woman was TALKING AT AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT VICTIM IN THE LOCKER ROOM, PLUS AT THREE OTHER WOMEN INCLUDING MYSELF WHO WERE INESCAPABLY IN EARSHOT AS WERE THE ANTIPODES. I observed without surprise that the litter of possessions--toiletries, snacks, clothing--strewn along the length of the counter and unattended when I had arrived over an hour before belonged to this woman, WHO WAS NOW NOSHING HER DRIED FRUIT AND APPLYING HER MASCARA WHILE NOT YET HAVING CLOTHED HERSELF SO SHE WAS SITTING NAKED ON A CHAIR WITHOUT BENEFIT OF A TOWEL LAYER.
I very deliberately didn't catch anyone's eye, because it's possible I have an unreasonably low tolerance for annoying people and because, whether or not that's true, it is certainly true that soliciting agreement about my annoyance with someone else would externalize and strengthen that negativity.
WHEN THAT SECOND VICTIM LEFT, FIRST GRADUALLY AND THEN SUDDENLY The Sun Also Rises, SHE THEN CONTINUED HER MONOLOGUE TO A THIRD WOMAN. HER TOPIC WAS MENOPAUSE AND HER EXACT TIMING AND SYMPTOMS AND SHE INQUIRED OF HER VICTIMS, WHOM SHE OUT-MENOPAUSED AT EVERY TURN, WHETHER THEY HAD CONSIDERED SUPPLEMENTAL ESTROGEN BECAUSE HER DOCTOR TOLD HER IT WAS NECESSARY ONLY IF YOU NOTICED YOU WERE BECOMING, NOT JUST KOOKY AS YOU'VE PROBABLY BEEN ALL YOUR LIFE, BUT NON-FUNCTIONALLY KOOKY.
Whether being told by a perfect stranger that yes, you're kooky in an above-average way that even limits other people's functionality counts as "noticing," she didn't mention, so I didn't tell her. She was a fuck of a lot less appealing than Owen Meany, anyway.
After keeping my trap shut, I ate a salad for lunch. Further signs of the apocalypse as events warrant.
The humiliatingly low number of lunges I did yesterday, ceasing when I felt the first twinge, was enough to pain, though not cripple, me today. Seating myself was painful, but sitting wasn't. So what did I do today?
Life[stride?] elliptical, with handles, at least 5 minutes, until the machine I wanted opened up.
Precor Elliptical, 40', about 5' at 20/20 and the remainder at 9/20 because the lower incline purportedly to concentrate on gluteals and hamstrings. I certainly did feel it more, and currently I am somewhat hobbled.
One of the selling points of this gym is that you would never have to wait for a machine. Yeah, not even at 4:45 p.m. on a Wednesday. I used a recumbent bike and then a stairmill for several minutes until an elliptical came up.
Precor elliptical, 45' + 3' cooldown until my pulse was under 120; 20/20 incline; 5' at 11/20, 25 at 12/20, and 15 at 13/20 resistance; and 5660 strides or 125.8 spm. The machine reported a figure, generous I'm sure, of calories burned at 618, but maybe that number is not impossible: it doesn't count arms, and I pump mine continuously. It's been a while since I've used handweights, though.
Swim, 1K.
Sometime along Sunday my left shoulder and neck seized up because of hours of unaccustomed posture. Turning my head to even ten o'clock hurt, and turning it to eight o'clock was impossible. A swim is just what I wanted to stretch myself out, and it was the first exercise (although it really doesn't count, any more than bike-commuting does) since before I went to Connecticut.
The gym has replaced several Precor ellipticals with Cybex "arc-trainers." The ellipticals with handles have your arms and legs move as they do when you run: when one knee is up, that elbow is back. The arc-trainers--I used one until one of the remaining two, damn, handle-less ellipticals came up--mean your arms and legs move in the opposite, unnatural way: knee up and arm forward at the same time. I don't get it. But I did 10' on that, then
Precor Elliptical, 45', 11/20 resistance, 20/20 incline, ~5410 strides. A lower average spm and total stride count than previous, but I haven't indulged in purposeful cardiovascular exercise in a month. Also--and this is big--I watched tv during it. Since Gym Foofy installed wee tv monitors on every cardio machine, I can always watch CNN, but the wee monitors don't display captions. I could maybe deal with just video and the scrolly thing, but at the time CNN was showing "People in the News," featuring Britney Spears. On another monitor, I glimpsed soccer, so I not only deliberately watched television but a televised sporting event: UCLA v. Notre Dame women; there was only one commercial interruption in three quarters of an hour. It was tied 1-1 when my time was up, and I see that Notre Dame won 4-3 in penalty kicks (I rooted for Notre Dame because they are the Fighting Irish).
Precor handle-y elliptical, 25', then handle-less, 20' @ 12/20 resistance and 20/20 incline. Then a scant 5 minutes and 20 floors on a stairmill, and then 3 or 4 minutes on a treadmill until my pulse was below 100.
Precor Elliptical, 45' @ 20/20 incline and 11/20 but mostly 12/20 resistance, ~5650 total strides (average spm 125).
Stairmill, 10', ~40 floors. I forgot to check but twice now I've done 20 floors in 5 minutes. My comfort level is between 6 and 7. I don't believe in holding the rails.
Two 3.6-mile city rides. I miss my bike! The morning ride was fine, though a tad windy; the evening ride was chilly. The next two days are forecast to be colder, but if I can bike back and forth on the second-shortest day of the year, only low temperature and not low light can remain as my excuse.
Precor Elliptical, 45', incline 20/20, resistance 12/20, 5809 strides: average 129 spm, which I felt. Plus 5' of stairmill.
Precor Elliptical, 45', resistance 12/20, incline 20/20, total strides 5650: average 125+, and I didn't feel it at all. Wasn't my goal some times ago 6000 strides in 45'?
I was goofy with the elliptical, resetting it when I didn't want to, and I had already reset it after five minutes of warm-up, so when I had done about 15 minutes I decided what the hell, I should do some weights for once in an era. So I did. The one advantage to weights is that I can listen to a book instead of music, though I probably would have stuck to music if I hadn't had only two hours of Lonesome Dove to go.
Precor Elliptical: 30', "gluteal" program 2, 4000 strides, and according to the machine 400 calories.
Upper body weights: chest press, lateral pull-down, incline press, decline press, shoulder press, some other things, who knows, in sets of 20 or to exhaustion.
Precor Elliptical, 15' gluteal and 15' interval program. The incline varies in these, unlike in the manual one which is my wont but I kept the resistance at 12/20.
On the first Monday of a new year, I expect I should be pleased not to have had to wait for a machine. Two ellipticals in the main area were abandoned but still claimed, as if the gym permitted reservation. I went first to an empty machine and was told "Oh that's Robin's," as if Robin were someone I should know, or owned the machine, or some other sarcastic thing that I didn't say.
The next machine had a towel and headphones on it. Was I being assertive, or was I being rude? I went with assertive for now. I had begun exercising when a man walked up to reclaim the equipment. I had looked around for scuttlebutters and seen none, and this man approached from outside the room. He was polite, also assertive. But you left it, and you can't reserve one, and it's a crowded time of day. He acknowledged that, and it was his acknowledgment that allowed me to yield the machine. I do think he was wrong to think that his headphones rather than his presence and usage gave him claim, but my desire to be accommodating and willing to compromise is more important than my judgment of his behavior. It's important to me that I could yield without resentment--though maybe I could do so because my disregarding his claim, however specious, was wrong.
And anyway, in the less popular because cramped and hot other room I used the last available elliptical. This also helped me not to resent.
Another reason this other room is less popular might be that it still has televisions suspended from the ceiling rather than individually. I was too much to one side to read the closed captions on the set closest to me, which is a fine thing, because it was tuned to Fox News. I recently watched a segment on Fox News because a Dot Orgerista was interviewed in it. I think one reason the Dot Orgger got only seven seconds of a two-minute piece is that what he had to say wasn't adequately skewed to its bias. I watched a blank green wall instead of people shooting hoops--which is yet another reason this other room is the last resort.
Afterward we got massive salads during a big shop at Whole Foods. Blueberries were available. Spinach and shredded carrot and diced zucchini and sliced cucumber and crescents of celery and whole grape tomatoes and a sprinkling of cheese and a little wedge of heart of palm and a wee strip of red pepper and a few chunks pineapple and blueberries blueberries blueberries blueberries.
On Friday and again Sunday I overstrained my left tricep. A lot: it hurts more and the hurt has lasted longer than ordinary post-weights soreness. So yesterday I did only lower-body cardio and today I merely swam a kilometer.
We drove to a new-to-us cranny of Rocky Mountain National Park, Wild Basin, and snowshoed six or seven miles to Calypso Cascades. Afterward, we stopped in the Lyons Café for the first time, where we had most excellent Beefy Chili in sourdough bread bowls. Also near Lyons, we saw more wildlife than we did in the park: a stooping red-tailed hawk, several kestrels patiently waiting on power lines, and something on the way up that looked so big I assumed it was a Swainson's. But on the way home, we saw, quite clearly flying low over the road, a bald eagle, so the so-big thing might have been an eagle hiding its white under a...damn, that started out promising, but orange isn't the only English word without a rhyme.
It was a lovely trek, though pine and aspen forest, around erratic massifs, over bridges crossing mostly but not entirely frozen streams (the same stream, a few times).
Precor Elliptical 30', gluteal 2 program, resistance 12/20, incline 13/20 (any higher and the program tops out). Supposedly 380 calories.
Then upright row, incline press, decline press, and a couple of other things involving my back. Weights. Thbtpl.
Also, I biked to work and thence to the gym, where I shoved my bike into the car because of that darkness thing. About 7 miles, a little less.
Precor Elliptical, 30' "weight loss" program, which I did for ~5' before deciding that a constant 20/20 incline and 12/20 resistance was better (perhaps in fact as well as in opinion) than only intervals. 410 calories according to the machine (which I assume inflates the number but also doesn't know I'm pumping my arms), 3800+ strides. Next time I'll use handweights again.
Also, weights! I'm stoked for weights, for once in my life. Chest press, fly, lat pull-down, row, something or other for lats, biceps, the neck, and what I figure is the human equivalent of the chicken's pope's nose, something or other for lats and biceps only that was less difficult despite using fewer muscles (the angle?), and shoulders. Also crunches on the bench dealie, with no weights whatsoever but absolutely not using my arms to press myself up (which I see a lot of people doing and which I think is a mistake.
I feel sore in a good way.
Woohoo, how often do I go on my own discipline alone?
Precor elliptical 30', manual, 12/20 resistance, 20/20 incline, with two 2 lb handweights for the middle 20' (I know I have to get some heavier ones), 3900 strides, 410~ calories according to the machine, which didn't know about the weights. Average spm 130.
Then chest press, fly, shoulder, lat pull down, row, and a little bit of bi- and tricepping and some crunches.
Precor Elliptical, 30', 12/20 resistance, 20/20 incline, 15' with two 2-pound handweights, 3936 strides and 422 machine-calories; average spm 131.2. Sunday I used the weights for 20', but today I--well, I don't know if "couldn't" is fair, but--didn't.
Precor Elliptical 546, 30', middle 20' with two 2-lb handweights, 3930 strides, 420 calories; average spm 131.
Upper body weights: chest press, fly, shoulder, row, also row on another style machine that rowed from a different angle, front pulldown, incline press, decline press, shoulder, bicep, tricep.
Biked maybe 7 miles in two legs, to work and later to gym.
Precor Elliptical, 30' @ 20/20 incline, 12/20 resistance, the middle 20' with two 2-lb. handweights: 3945 strides, 418 calories, average spm 131.5.
Upper body weights: chest press and fly, lat pull down, row, shoulder, front pulldown, some other thing.
Also, and I haven't recorded these before, but crunches, by golly, on a slanted board (second up of three or four angles), no wonder I look like I've borne children, 75. I stopped somewhat because RDC and I were meeting in three minutes but also because ow. However many degrees I lift my upper torso, it's not many. I see people on that apparatus where they're upright, bearing their weight on their forearms, and lifting their legs, at all, straight not bent, some of them past 90 degrees. That is not me.
Precor Elliptical, 30' @ 20/20 incline and 12/20 resistance, 25' with two 2-lb. handweights, only 3818 strides, 408 calories, and average spm 127+.
Some weights: chest press, fly, row, lat pulldown.
100 crunches on the ramp.
Then I ate a salad, I was going to say bigger than my head, but bigger than my foot, at Whole Foods, while reading Lonesome Rangers. I love me some John Leonard. Most people who make me feel unread aren't good reads because I'm intimidated or they're off-putting (or b because a, of course). John Leonard is an exception, so far the exception.
Bike 7+ in two legs, to work and then to gym. I need two things, a new Kryptonite lock less vulnerable to Biro pens and about a half hour more sunlight, before I can bike the third leg home.
My usual type of elliptical wasn't available so I used the kind with handles, and my spm was less than half, between 53 and 58, for the 30', during which I reached a distance of 2.4 whatever units and burned an alleged 480+ calories.
Which leaves me with a balance of about 80 for the day after introducing Kal to Starbucks' "drinking chocolate" this afternoon, and that's after turning a blind eye to the fact we had breakfast for Wednesday lunch.
Because I held the handles throughout instead of pumping my arms as I can on the Precor, I know that my heartrate plateaued around 164 bpm, which is just about 90% of my maximum heart rate, but all I felt was good. When I returned to aerobic machines after the swimming season, I occasionally touched 174 bpm, so my heart is either that much stronger or I'm not exercising as hard, I hope the former.
Precor Elliptical, 30' @ 12/20 resistance and 20/20 incline; only 3700+ strides and 400 calories, 123+ spm. So I didn't push there but I did 10' on the stairmill, 68 steps per minute. I do like that the stairmill sets a pace that you are obliged to keep up with.
Then 100 crunches on the second angle, and I did some abdominal stuff on the TotalGym at home before. And I tried that abdominal exercise where you support your weight on your back and your forearms and raise your legs and, shockingly, I could do five. I could have done more but not raising my legs as high: my measure was to see, in the mirror across the way, the soles of my sneakers cross the waist of my shorts.
Precor Elliptical 30' @ 12/20 resistance, 20/20 incline, 20' two 2-lb. handweights, 4025 strides, 425 calories, spm 134.2. Six whole abdominal leg lifts, which exercise might be called "captain's chair."
Precor Elliptical, 30' @ 13/20 resistance, 20/20 incline, no weights because increased resistance, 3775 strides, 425 calories. More captain's-chair abdominal leg lifts.
Also I might have bought a professional massage for the first time ever. All of it was great, but I think next time I will have the masseur just pull my skull away from my shoulders for the full period, because that was the best. It was deep-tissue massage, and I was supposed to be sore afterward, like next day. No sign of that yet, and I don't expect to be. Maybe I need to have another. Yes, I think so.
One 3.6-mile city ride. This morning when I left it had just begun to snow, so I was happy to have a ride home.
One 3.6-mile city ride, without snow, and in contacts. It felt colder than 30, but perfectly manageable.
Two 3.6-mile city rides. This morning was just below my comfort level, in the low 20s; this afternoon was perfect, in the mid 40s.
Precor Elliptical, 30' @ level 12.66 (10' @ 12 and 20' @ 13), 3940 strides, 430 calories, 20' with two 2-lb. handweights.
Upper-body weights. Chest press, fly, shoulder press, upright row, lat pull-down, triceps, incline press, decline press, something else.
Then I couldn't do any leg lifts in the captain's chair. One, barely. I have no abdominal strength whatsoever.
What the hell was wrong with me? Precor Elliptical 30' @ 12.85/20 resistance and 20/20 incline, with handweights only for 10 minutes. I've forgotten strides but I probably averaged ~122 spm. Is it because I accustomed my body to 60% resistance that my gradually pushing toward the full 30' at 65% wears me out?
About eight miles in two legs, to work and to gym.
Precor Elliptical, 45' @ 56% resistance and 100% incline, 20' with two 2-lb. handweights, 5770 strides and 615 calories.
Precor Elliptical, 30' @ 59.17%, 3990 strides, 423 calories.
Weights: squats, 3x12 @ 70 lbs; chest press, 3x12 @ 25; fly, 3x12 @ 15; shoulder, 3x12 @ something; lat pull-down, 3x12 @ 70.
Abdominal leg lifts, one to the waist and four somewhat lower.
Cybex arc trainer, 30' @ 100% incline and 51% resistance; this machine doesn't total your strides (that I can figure out) but I ranged from 94 to 107; and it reported 474 calories, which I doubt. I doubt the Precor count as well but I figure it's comparable from one exertion to the next.
Then weights: 3x12 leg press @ 70 and 1x12 @ 80; 3x12 chest press @ 20 and 1x12 @25; 3x12 fly @ 15; 3x12 shoulder press @ 20. Ten attempted abdominal leg lifts.
The pool is uncovered and being prepared for its opening in 10 days. Wheee!
Precor Elliptical, 30', 100% incline, 60% resistance, 10' with two 2-lb. handweights: 3852 strides, 415 calories.
Standing leg press, 3x12 @ 80. Chest press, 3x12 @ 25. Lat pulldown, 3x12 @ 60, maybe 70. Row, 3x12 @70ish. Two sets of 5 abdominal leg-lifts in the captain's chair.
Swam 1K.
The pool opened yesterday, but though I drove and had my gym bag I declined to go to the club immediately after work because I didn't have my suit with me and the weather meant I had to be outside, gardening if not swimming, not inside on a machine. So today, after a few more hours in the vegetable garden, I swam.
Thank goodness for heated water. It was lovely. Sixty-degree sun meant getting out wasn't painful either.
I am so glad to have access to an outdoor pool. This city is much more palatable now that I can swim when the weather says swim, instead of for only the hottest two months.
Cybex arc trainer, 10' @ 100% incline and 51% resistance, then
Precor elliptical, 20' @ 100% incline and 60% resistance.
Weights: squats, 3x12 @80; chest press, 3x12 @25; fly, 3x12 @15; lats, 3x12 @60. Abdominal leg lifts, 2x5.
Swim (matron breast stroke, because I was wearing contacts), .5K.
Bike about 8 miles, to work to gym to home.
Precor Elliptical, 15' @ 100% incline and 70% resistance, ~1985 strides and 225 calories.
Swim 1K.
Precor Elliptical, 45' @ 100% incline and 60% resistance, 20' with two 2-lb. handweights, 5865 strides and 626 calories.
Leg Presses, 3x12 @80 and 1x12 @90; chest press, 3x12 @25 and 1x12 @30; fly, 3x12 @20 and 1x8 @25; lat pulldown, 3x12 @70 and 1x12 @80; upright row, 3x12 @45. Abdominal leg lift, 2x5.
Precor elliptical, 30' @ 100% incline and 60% resistance, 20' of two 2-pound handweights, 3925 strides and 420 calories. Lunges part of the way (a small part) toward the captain's chair, and 2x5 abdominal leg lifts.
Precor elliptical, 30' @ 100% incline and 60.17% resistance, 20' of two 2-lb. handweights.
Weights: leg presses, 3x12 @90; chest presses, 3x12 @35; fly, 3x12 @25; shoulder press, 3x12 @25 I think; lats, 3x12 @70.
Ten abdominal leg lifts.
Bike 8ish miles in three legs.
Precor Elliptical, 15' @100% incline and 71% resistance, 1984 strides and 225 calories.
Bike to work and to gym. If the three legs are 8.3 miles, what are two? I have to use the triptometer again. RDC drove me home because I was going to be Productive tonight.
Swim 1050 meters. The last 50 don't count.
Two 3.6-mile city rides. Possibly I had the wind at my bike, but I zoomed on the homeward leg.
2000 meters. I need to track my time, too. I know I can swim a kilometer in 20', but I don't know how long I can sustain that pace.
Before Gym Foofy, when I swam in city pools, it was rare for me to log two kilometers in a 50' period: the difference being not having to share a lane with four or five other people.
The problem, I suspect, is that I regularly push my heart way past what I ought to. Eighty percent of my alleged maximum heart rate is 147, and while I don't think the grip-sensors in gym cardio machines are exact, they do regularly indicate 170+. I sweat, and I breathe hard, and I flush, but I don't turn scarlet, I don't struggle for breath, and I don't fall over, so I have figured this is okay.
It's okay, except it renders me incapable of donating blood. Forty-eight beats per minute: I don't need my heart to be that strong.
So today I tried a different machine where ingrained habit wouldn't make me feel lazy for not exerting myself at the usual level. I used a stairmill, an escalator type deal where, unlike with an elliptical or climber, I do have to lift my entire weight. It's uphill, of course, so I didn't feel it in my knees so much.
Stairmill, 30', 120 floors.
I did feel it more in my quadriceps and lungs. I wonder if this is why exercise hasn't led to weight loss: I have been training my heart muscle but not the big fat-containing and -burning muscles in my buttocks and legs.
Afterward, leg presses, 3x12 @90 and 1x12+ @100, which is where I'll stay for a while because subsequent increases are at 20-pound increments, not 10-; assisted chin-ups, with I think 140 pounds or 90% of assist; abdominal leg-lifts to exhaustion (a dozen! my goodness, what strong abs you don't have!); and 50 crunches on an incline bench.
Bike 8.3 miles and swim 2000 meters. I am not sure I have biked all five days two weeks in succession before. Yea me.
Bike 8.3 miles in three legs; stairmill 15' @ 68 steps per minute; swim 1000 meters.
Such gorgeous weather. We took the kayaks to Chatfield reservoir and paddled. I am going to learn to dismount and reënter my kayak without flipping it. This time when I wanted to swim in the middle of the "lake," I gave my skirt, sunglasses, and hat to RDC instead of putting them in my drysack (whatever that's called) and lashing it down, and shoved my paddle into what rigging there is--it's not rigging at all, but tie-downs--and he held Watership Up as I existed and clambered back in. I am definitely going to practice this one, because I am totally taking this vessel with me when I next go home.
One 3.6-mile city ride on Friday. Rain absolutely bucketed down when RDC picked me up at four.
Today Kal gave me a ride in and I biked the other half. Very tidy.
Bike 8.3 miles. Swim 1000 meters.
I intended 2000. The fellow in the next lane said he was getting his laps in before the storm, and I looked to the west and northwest since that's whither most of the weather comes, but he was looking south. The southern sky was pretty dark, and it occurred to me that last night's storm was from the south: we had had to close the dining room windows instead of the bedroom.
Just to seal my fate--I first typed fail, as in failure, though I was also thinking of bail--I swam the next length after the first k in butterfly. My lungs were going to surge out of my chest by the last meters because I have no pulmonary capacity, and I flipped to my back and didn't even swim but reached over my head for the rope, pulled until my hand was by my thigh, and so towed myself until, about halfway back, I bothered to add some desultory kicks.
The rain started as soon as I got home, so I chose to believe my bailing was prudence instead of laziness.
Two 3.6-mile city rides, plus.
The plus got me to the salon, but my cutter was running 20' late. Ordinarily this wouldn't be an issue, but I couldn't wait because I was expecting my mother, and we couldn't reschedule because, surprise, she's moving to San Francisco. Waaah.
Swim 1000 meters, in the morning, before the three of us went to the Museum of Nature and Science.
Swim 1000 meters.
I drove today, giving Kal a ride to work and afterward to the car shop. RDC had said he needed to drive, to go to CostCo for several things, among them minoxidyl. I said I sure would like the car, because if there's anything in the world I owe Kal it's a ride to work, and he might look in the downstairs bath for his medication.
And then I swam.
Bike 8.3 miles. Swim 500 meters. Only 500, but I worked on pulling through my torso and breathing every other stroke.
Kayaking, kayaking, kayaking. I need to improve my technique and form, I'm sure, but I don't think I can improve on my preferred site. Grand Lake is so pretty.
Biked 3ish miles, whatever it is to the gym and back, and swam 2 miles (3.2K). I began to think I'd had enough at about lap 45, and Apple should really look into a waterproof iPod.
Bike 8.3 miles and swim 1000 meters.
Also I finished The Amber Spyglass during the next hour, poolside.
Two 3.6-mile city rides, completing another five-day bike week.
No swim, because it was maybe going to storm.
Two 3.6-mile city rides.
No swim because I had already worked late in a pre-Big Top kind of way. Yes, that's a bad excuse.
I could not haul myself onto a raft, despite handles. The sexy back of lore (I had a fabulously sexy back once) has lost definition. Today I did weights for the first time since the pool opened.
Bike 8.3 miles in three legs; squats, 3x12 @ 80; lats, 3x12 @60; chest press, 3x12 @30; shoulders, 3x12 @25. Swim 1000 meters.
I usually pause every five laps for water. At 10, I noticed a man leaning against a planter, and he was still there at 11. I asked him if he needed to share a lane, and he said he would wait until a whole lane was available. I was about to turn back to the water when he asked, "May I suggest something?" It had to be about swimming, unless he was wantonly cruel, and he looked like a swimmer--in his 60s or maybe 70s, but a swimmer. "Of course."
He told me something I knew but didn't enforce: each hand slices the water index finger-first instead of chopping it pinky-first. I did two laps thus and did feel a difference: my shoulders were more engaged. Now he was standing by the pool edge where I would see him and stop. I stopped. He said his index-finger gesture was an exaggeration and modified it for me. And two more things? I nodded. One, I should look not beneath me but to the bottom at the other end. By raising the head, the shoulders follow. Two, with the body parallel to the water surface, the hand enters at an angle, toward 8 o'clock, rather than at 9, and in front of the eyes not the shoulders, and keep the elbows up.
I know I have seen him before: I remembered him because he looks like McCarthy's father. Now I know his name and am hugely grateful to him. He said that just in those laps he watched, I had improved greatly. I liked that. And unlike with the ski instructor, who also said I improved in March of 2004--the last time I skied--this is made sense to me and that I'll therefore remember and apply it.
Even after his first comment I was thinking of him as Gram in Dicey's Song, descending upon Sammy's grade as the Lone Marble Ranger (so he was the Lone Swimming Ranger) and, as she said to Mina's family, to put a face on the boogeyman of my bad technique.
Plus it didn't rain until I got home.
I didn't swim today either. Poop.
Aerobic:
Elliptical, 15' @ level 12, incline 100%, 212 calories, 1962 strides
Stairs: 5' @ 68 spm.
Treadmill, 5' @ 15% incline, 2 mph, until my heartrate was below 130 bpm.
Weights:
Lats, 3x8 @50
Squats, 3x12 @80
Quads, 3x12 @17.5
Hamstrings, 3x12 @15
Row, 3x12 @60
Pulldown, 3x12 @60. This must be the same thing as lats.
High row, 3x12 @60
Incline press, 3x12 @40
Decline press, 3x12 @30
If I lost 15 pounds of fat without adding any muscle, I would bring my fat percentage down to reasonable and my weight under my IQ, which was a, you should pardon the term, brainlessly easy goal to set at age 17. How many times have I declared this goal, starting now--no, now, after this last handful of M&Ms.
8.3 miles in three legs; swim 1,000 meters; squats, hamstrings, quads, upper body.
Swim 1,000 meters. I made the bad mistake of getting out at that point to have a banana. Even if I had collapsed at 2,000 without that banana, never mind 3,000, it would have been more than 1,000.
Two 3.6-mile city rides.
Then I walked Inga. She marks more than any female dog I have ever known, and eventually I wouldn't let her squat because look, dog, you're not even squeezing out a drop there. Also I have picked up dog poop. In a plastic bag that I used as a glove, but still. Next time I'm taking hand-sanitizer.
Also I walked to the post office, finally mailing some presents for Increase.
8.3 miles in three legs; swim 1,000 meters; walk Inga.
I know a single kilometer at a time is nothing in distance, but it's long enough for me concentrate on my new technique, on kicking harder, and on breathing every other stroke. I'm down to every 1.8 strokes, say. I really must learn to do a proper flip-turn. Also I can do a pretty reliable 20-minute kilometer now, and have set myself a goal of a 30' 1500.
Two 3.6-mile city rides.
Last night dusk was falling before I walked Inga, so we stayed on 16th and only walked to East High and back; yesterday I went immediately after work and so we walked around the lake in the park again. She is a very polite dog, gently accepting a treat from your fingers, sitting calmly to be leashed, sitting immediately after but one command, and not pulling on the lead.
That is, until yesterday, when she suddenly darted to one side and grabbed--some bark? what could she be so enthusiastic about in bark?--no, a fish someone must have pulled from the lake and later discarded. It wasn't very smelly, but it was old to have, I saw with distaste as she chomped, a maggot squirm from the slitted guts.
She does not know, or chose not to obey, "drop" or "leave it" or "out," though she sat immediately upon command. Dogs eat nasty crap, I know, but I prefer them to do it when their owners are home to let them out if they need to heave or loose their bowels and when I am not responsible for them. I squirted her in the face with my water bottle, and she looked at me reprovingly and held to her fish.
(Oh damn, for the first time I thought of Tony Markarios and his fish after he lost Ratter.)
I was reluctant to use force, because I didn't know if, with this delicacy of dead trout, she might snap. But I straddled her, gripping her shoulders with my knees, and gripped a jaw in each hand, pressing her lips against her teeth. That might not be the best way to get a dog to open her mouth, but it worked, and she didn't growl a bit. I praised her, but does a dog care about hearing "Good dog!" from people not her own? She lunged for the fish between her paws as soon as I released her head, and that was a near thing as I had not yet grabbed her leash again, but I won. She pulled as I hauled her away, but she forgot or at least stopped trying in less than thirty feet.
At least she doesn't try to lap up Canada goose shit. We couldn't go to the park at all if that were the case.
A few weeks ago, maybe before the Big Top, CoolBoss asked me about swimming, and after I gave my basic statistics, she said I should do the Danskin triathlon. So I said okay. It doesn't come across right in print. The clerk in Runners Roost (there's no apostrophe--is it a subject and predicate, or a misspelled possessive?) got the right tone when she asked me about my running habits. I said okay the way you'd agree to take in the neighbor's mail, as if it were nothing much, and perhaps with a hint of abashment. Is abashment a word? It should be. Oo, Merriam-Webster says yes. Good.
I bought sneakers, which I guess are called running shoes now? And shorts of some opaque but extremely lightweight material that does not chafe between my thighs, which, yes, touch. And socks of sturdier material than the nearly-mesh ones I bike and gym with. And an armband for my iPod.
Later than I planned today, at noon, but still without the heat I feared, I made my first attempt. I lunged past four buildings and walked the rest of the block to the park, and there I commenced to run, if it can be so called.
Yesterday at the store I ran on a treadmill and was filmed (happily only from the knees down) to check my stride. I do not pronate--my feet do not turn either out or in--which I knew from the wear on my regular shoes and I hope will not change with a faster stride.
Faster, but not longer. I have insufficient strength in my legs--in my quads?--to lift my legs into as long a stride at speed as I can at a pleasant walk. On a treadmill, I ran for maybe three minutes at 6 mph, which surprised me. On actual ground, for two miles rather than .3 of one, I was rather slower.
I had hoped I could run, however pitiful the stride, for a full mile--the park is a mile wide. I did not run one whole continuous mile, but I did mostly run, with walking interruptions, the whole distance, rather than a mile run and a mile walk. The interruptions were less than half a short block at the most and one was at the Thatcher Fountain for a quick drink.
Honestly I'm a tetch proud of myself. Sometime soon, tomorrow if I'm not hobbled, I'd like to use a treadmill to see how long I can keep up 6 mph in a controlled environment.
Jog 2 miles.
Later in the day I walked the dog, gingerly. Thursday I walked slowly because of cramps. Today I walked slowly because tired.
Two 3.6-mile city rides. I brought my sneakers to work, but I used the excuse of a shirt that would barely zip up in the morning as a practical back-up to my still-hobbling self's desire not to run. Nor did I swim, because Inga needed her walk, especially since I didn't walk her yesterday; and I also had to finish baking cookies before bookgroup.
Which was fun. Tonight's host has three dogs, two Labs and a greyhound, and five cats. After the black lab had had her fill of petting, I was given a lapful of grey cat who not only splatted bonelessly against me but also loved my continuous petting. It put a paw around my arm as if hugging me, and after repositioning itself it wound up with a hind paw in my hand.
Two 3.6-mile city rides. Jog maybe a half-mile sandwiched in 2 miles of brisk, long-strided walking. Ow, and 25 stationary lunges. That's what hobbled me on Saturday, not the running.
I didn't swim. I was nearly falling asleep when I left work.
I have no idea how far I went. I "ran" about 40 minutes.
Sneakers, water sandals, and dressy sandals for a comped dinner at CLH's restaurant Friday made for three pairs of shoes on a six-day trip. If I hadn't run at least once, that would have made my excessive packing overpacking. Can't have that.
Two 3.6-mile city rides and a jog.
My regular course will be the perimeter of City Park, which is three miles. In time I'll add more distance in the park, because if I'm to run 3.1 miles in a race I should be able to run more than that comfortably, right? Like maybe 5 miles? I dunno.
I don't know how this is possible but the north side slopes up to the east without opposite declines anywhere else that I've noticed. It's an Escher park. So I will run clockwise around the park and up that hill. "Run" being an exaggeration, of course. I jogged along the south side to the Esplanade, walked to the west side, ran up the west side, turned right and stopped. I also scurried across to City Park Golf Course to slurp from a tee's water cooler. I acknowledge it as trespass but is that really bad of me? I don't know how people run distances or in heat: yesterday was 70 but I was parched in less than 2 miles. I walked eastward up the slope and didn't pick up my pace until the easternmost entrance to the zoo, the one it shares with DMNS, then I ran back to my starting point, and walked home to cool down. It was 5:09 when I last looked at the clock but didn't start immediately, so it took me slightly less than 44 minutes to go three miles.
8.3 miles in three legs. One mile swim, including two non-continuous lengths of butterfly. The in-between length was of Matron Sidestroke, but it was just the one length dividing two of a stroke of which one once was enough to make my heart nearly burst.
Two 3.6-mile city rides. Jogged and walked just about (according to what I can calculate with Google maps) three miles.
Encouragingly, when I went outside I only thought it was on the warm side of nice and thought it was my flailings as a non-runner that drained me. But it's 86, I discovered when I returned. (It's 27 September and 86 degrees out!) This encourages me (as a "runner," if not as a terrestial) because I had assumed myself incapable of exertion in temperatures over say, 80 or 82. That's been the sticking point in this whole triathlon scheme, in fact: I'm supposed to run on purpose--without a good reason like being chased by a leopard--in mid-July? But this makes me hope that maybe I can acclimate. Heaven knows I felt a lot more oppressed at sea level last Sunday at a humid 73.
Another nail in the homesickness coffin.
Swim 1.6K. I really worked on kicking hard from the hips and pushing from the abs, and that wore me out.
Also I breathed every stroke and a half, because every other wasn't enough but every was too much. Every 1.5 stroke means that I keep straighter too. I pull harder on the right than the left anyway, and breathing left only means even greater imbalance. It works okay except that my right ear is not used to the underwater-overwater thing: it feels weird. It can't be experiencing anything different than the left ear does, though, so I must only get used to it.
Two 3.6-mile city rides and three miles of walking and jogging. Can it really be three miles? The bike ride seems longer. I "ran" slightly more--maybe two short blocks--of it than last time.
Two 3.6-mile city rides and three miles of jogging.
I jogged more of my route than before but at a slower pace.
On days I both bike-commute and run at noon, I must eat more than an apple and two bananas. I was shaky by the time I got home.
Just a brisk lovely walk in the park in the late afternoon. Fleece on top, shorts below. A good day.
On a treadmill in the gym, I ran 5K in 36'30". I know very well I have never run three miles straight before, but I had no idea it would be so very much easier in this mode. What a cheat. On a treadmill I should try to run 5 miles, because I should be running farther than the race distance anyway.
Also I should run at all: I am fully confident of my ability to complete the triathlon as long as I pass water stations, and while I'm not foolish enough to think of competing in it, I should aim for a not entirely absent l from my verb.
Brr. 21 degrees this morning. With fleece pants over my bike shorts and a thin sweatshirt, I was fine all over except the tips of my fingers, which my full-finger bikegloves cannot protect. The homeward ride was fine at 41: fingerless bike gloves with the full ones and the fleece in my panniers.
Two 3.6-mile city rides.
Considering I had neither sports bra, headphones, nor a water bottle, I had an okay workout. The workout tank affords slight support, certainly not the least support you might notice in any given gym visit, so I started with weights. After my leg presses, RDC caught up with me and lent me his spare headphones. Running was still right out but I did 15' on the elliptical, 12/20 resistance and 20/20 incline. I wanted to do some stairs after that but the mill was balky so I returned to weights, lat pull downs, thigh abductors and adductors or whatever the reverse is, weighted crunches, inclined crunches, suspended leg lifts.
Elliptical, 15' @ 12/20 resistance and 20/20 incline; treadmill, run 5k in 35'30; some weights; swim 800m.
Ow. Not at the time, but two days later and even three days later (when I write this). I'm not going about this the right way, I can tell.
Two 3.6-mile rides. I have to find a way to affix my headlamp to my helmet for the afternoon half. For the morning half, I managed to wedge my hands into both glove liners and full-finger bike gloves. It was 22 degrees and my fingers were still cold when I got to work, but not frozen to immobility and it only tingled instead of goddamn hurt as they warmed up.
Precor elliptical, 15' @ 12/20 resistance and 20/20 incline
Treadmill, 30' between 5 mph and 6 mph. 2.5 miles, not 3K, because I forgot socks and I could tell I had an abrasion along the top of one foot and blisters on the insteps of both, caused by sockless lacing.
Weights.
Ran four miles in 47+'; longer this time because I warmed up on the treadmill rather than the elliptical, walking at 4 mph and a 15% incline. 350+ vertical feet.
Some weights.
Swam 600k.
Last week I fell hard on the steps and got myself a viciously dark and complicated bruise the size of two fists on my left buttock. Besides palpating it (and admiring that, well, my butt is firm in at least that one coagulated spot), I have nothing fun to do with the bruise. (I am such a grown-up now: I recently also didn't pop a blister on my instep.) I've even run out of people to show it to.
Plus the endpaper in one of RDC's ski magazines is a photograph of a skier whose one entire buttock is deeply bruised. The magazine, despite being geared toward adults, blurs out the man's cleavage, and at least I was not that prudish when I dropped trou and demanded Scarf's admiration. But my hematoma is both smaller and less severe than that skier's, and RDC turned that page the same day as my fall (bad socks), so it makes me feel all inadequate.
Plus today I "ran" for the first time in 10 days and the bruise and I did not enjoy the butt-bouncing. Resolved: eliminate the butt bouncing.
I took advantage of the car, the day off (today is the Day After Christmas according to Dot Org's calendar), and the lovely weather to break in my new running clothing (pants and jacket). If it hadn't been windy the black and the thinsulate might have been too much. I drove down to Haitch's and my old walk and commenced the 5.2 link.
I ran most of the 2.6 miles out and maybe half of the way back. I can run three or four miles without too much gnashing of teeth on a treadmill, and this is the difference between a mill and the real world.
I pointed out to an elderly couple ambling along the hawk that'd been perched at the top of a tree for two miles, met a six-month-old merle collie named Skye, and even a basset hound out for a jog with its humans, one adult jogging and the other a child with training wheels on her bike. The adult said the hound was okay running short distances. Who knew?
Accompanying me were PJ Harvey, Liz Phair, and Fiona Apple. I could still hear the magpies mag, mag, magging, and it was lovely to run toward a horizon instead of a television monitor. So much of my life is spent focusing less than two feet in front of me--computer screen at work, immoveable monitor at the gym, laptop or book at home.
I cannot see how I am going to run 5K after biking 20K and swimming .5K. Why can't the running be first, to get it out of the way, and the swimming last?
Two 3.6-mile city rides. What is even the last time I rode 20K (the triathlon distance)? Who'm I kidding.
In 2005, I spent 16 hours on elliptical and stairmill exercise machines. I lifted the same amount of weight a few times. I starting jogging in September and logged a vast 27.2 miles in the real world and another 24 on treadmills. I didn't walk, hike, or kayak much. I biked about 735 miles, including 100 days commuting to work, and I swam 46.5 kilometers. I started and ended the year at the exact same weight and percentage of body fat.
In 2006, I hope to bike 1000 miles, run 250 miles, and swim 50 kilometers.
I ran slightly more than three miles in about 34 minutes, according to the times of the songs I listened to (Afro-Celt Sound System, Morphine, Pearl Jam, the usual). Where I felt it, in addition to my knees, was my poochy belly.
Going to PT later in the afternoon, I winced trotting down the four flights of stairs to leave Dot Org and climbing the single flight to the PT office with my bike on my shoulder made me flinch again. The therapist, Carla, had me run on the treadmill, and observed something about a high Q angle: I run knock-kneed. Apparently it is possible to run with your feet straight but your knees knocked, which is nothing I wanted to know. And this is possible with my outward-facing kneecaps. But then! She taped my knees, which is nothing she had done before. Soft tape first, to protect the skin against the next, extra-strength layer, which hauled my kneecaps inward toward their proper alignment. I ran again, and very little pain! I ran the steps up and down, and no pain! It was grand.
I am still meant to strengthen the VMOs and keep loosening the IT bands because tape is not a long-term solution. I have to work, in other words.