Let's go ride bikes!

Today my friend introduced me to Capital Bike Share and we went for a ride. The last time I was on a bicycle was probably about a decade ago. It was so much fun. I'd forgotten! We spent most of our time on the Mount Vernon Trail but we also wandered around a bit in DC, passing by the Lincoln Memorial and the Kennedy Center, among other things. I had such a wonderful time. MapMyRide tells me we traveled 7.24 miles and burned 542 calories over the course of our two hour journey. Not bad for my first time in so many years. And I honestly had fun, not feeling tired (or even all that cold) until toward the end. I guess I'm in better shape than I thought I was. Or maybe it was just an easy ride. :)

Victories

I made it! Five straight days of getting up at 5am and going to the gym before work! Granted, today I had to talk myself into it and even then only struggled through twenty minutes on the ArcTrainer (260 calories), but hey, I did it!

This evening I bought some more workout clothes. Man, watching myself struggle into a sports bra was one of the more depressing sights of my life. So fat! But I needed more clothes to keep up with my increased schedule. I don't like to re-wear something without washing it, though occasionally with shorts that's what I'd had to do. But (hopefully) not more, provided my husband can keep up with the laundry.

I'm supposed to go cycling with a friend of mine tomorrow, but I haven't heard from her in a few days and so I'm not 100% positive that's still happening. Otherwise, the next four days will be a sort of vacation from the gym: Sunday will be resting, then Monday and Tuesday I'm traveling to upstate New York for work. It's just a single overnight, so I won't have time to do much other than work, sleep, and fly. But I'll try to at least keep my eating under control while I'm away. I've been horrible about that lately. (And by lately I mean my entire adult life.)

Oh hey, I never wrote about yesterday's training session. It was one of the more diabolical set of exercises, including one-armed plank positions while pumping a weight with my free hand. That took some serious figuring before I could pull off the position without falling over. I'm not sure if coordination or strength is the bigger problem, but man do I have trouble balancing with a lot of these moves.

Despite the discouraging shopping trip (shopping for clothes has always been one of my least favorite activities, just below going to the dentist), I'm feeling pretty good about myself right now. Let's see if I can keep that up.

Gym Recap

Day three of getting up at 5am and I seem to be doing more or less okay. I had my training this morning and hot damn was it hard. Like, far harder than I'd expected. I'm not sure if that's because it was so early and my muscles aren't used to actually doing anything that soon after getting up, or if things were genuinely more difficult. Either way, it was tough but I made it.

My coworker is trying to convince me that it's really worth it in the end. I don't believe him, but I did concede that I can lunge and squat far better than I could two months ago. So there's that.

Since we had to reschedule yesterday's session to today, I'm seeing Jeev again tomorrow morning. He said we'll be working more on strength training on my legs, which is nice - today was mostly upper body and cardio.

Gym Recap

So I figured it would be better to alter my sleep schedule entirely rather than resetting my alarm every day, so I am now getting up at 5am and hitting the gym before work. Today is day two and I feel better today than I did yesterday. Jeev had a final exam today so he missed our session, so I went into the cardio cinema and watched Roxeanne for a while. I'd forgotten what a funny film that is. I'll have to rent it sometime. I don't know how many calories I burned - I did four minutes on the ArcTrainer, about ten minutes on the treadmill at 2.5mph (both while waiting for Jeev before I learned he wouldn't be showing up) and thirty minutes on this weird elliptical-ish thing that I suppose was something akin to a NordicTrak. I didn't set anything (it was too dark in there to see what any of the buttons did anyway) but it wasn't very hard. Better than nothing, though, right? Jeev rescheduled for tomorrow morning, and that will be the real test: can I handle a full day of work after a full training session? We'll see!

Gym Recap

Lordy lordy. Jeev got a second job so we're moving my sessions from Monday and Wednesday at 4pm to Tuesday and Thursday at 6am. Today I went for a dry run to make sure I could even handle getting up another 45 minutes earlier. I did my usual cardio: 20 minutes on the ArcTrainer followed by 30 minutes on the inclined treadmill. Dunno how many calories I burned because I accidentally cleared out my stats on the treadmill before looking at them. That's easy to do - if you press the "stop" button twice they're gone for good, and since the touch pad's responsivity is pretty inconsistent, it's easy to think you hadn't pressed it when you actually did.

But anyway, I made it. I'm super tired and my tummy was kind of unhappy because I forgot to eat something before I started working out, but I still did my workout without any trouble. I'm hoping with this new schedule it'll be easier for me to hit the gym more days a week. My goal is five - every workday - but we'll see. All I know is that lately, when I get off work, the last thing I want to do is make another stop before going home. This way I'll have gotten the gym out of the way before I even show up at the office.

Gym Recap

I hit the gym this morning before work. This was my first time going to this gym before work, and it was fine. I did my regular cardio: 20 minutes on the ArcTrainer (267 calories) followed by 30 minutes on the inclined treadmill (338 calories). The latter I did inside the Cardio Cinema, where they were showing The Goonies. It's been ages since I last saw that movie, to the point where there were several lines I didn't remember at all. Adding to the entertainment were the subtitles, which often amusingly edited the fast-talking, grammatically-incorrect kids. Now I need to pull out the DVD and rewatch it while I'm not drenched in sweat.

The workout overall was good. I went mostly because my butt was super sore from Wednesday's session, and I figured some extra walking would help work out some of the pain. I don't know that it did, necessarily, but I'm going to tell myself it did and that I'd be a lot more uncomfortable if I hadn't gone.

Gym Recap

Leaps and landings! Leaps and landings! Oh! My! God!

So yeah, I'm really super sore now, and Jeev suggested I wear my brace again on Monday since we're going to be doing more leaps and landings. Guh.

Notable exercise of the day: sitting on a chair and attempting to stand up one-legged. Insanely, maddeningly difficult for me. Of course, after the first set, Jeev put down one of those foam pads that he has me do balance work on, just because it evidently wasn't hard enough. Good lord that was tough!