And now, dear readers buckle in for a full tilt workout session. Yes, yes, you will need an energy drink to survive.
Hippety Hop Heaving Gym Bunny on the Job -
Despite the most convenient of outs - my workout companion, and the sole reason I considered going to the gym in the first place, couldn't make it - I braved the gym alone on Tuesday. It had been a while, due to last week's trialmageddon, and then +Andrew Wright's dudeathlon plus the Tour de 90's Discotheque hogging up our weekend.
I have no objection to rest weeks, mind you, but given my inimitable "grace" (ongoing battle with immovable objects continues... so far, immovable objects:10; Adella's poor contusionable body: -1000) and propensity for pulling various bits and pieces of myself like silly putty, I prefer to save of those rest-weeks for times when I might actually require rest.
I did throw the entire work out on fast forward, though. I ran to the Y, I pounced on the treadmill, I ran on the treadmill, I leapt off the treadmill, I pitched myself towards various strength apparatuses, and then I ran back. All tidily within a half hour. Barely a pause between sets. So it was a pretty speedy affair, not counting the extensive desalination required post-production... I prefer the term glowing (or, perhaps, irradiating ).
As is always the case, I apparently worked up a sweat, but nothing so stirring as an actual heart beat. It is the universal consensus of all gym equipment ever that I have no heart to beat... yes I did try to hold on to the little hand-sensors, an act that is very awkward on a treadmill presumably constructed for somebody with shorter legs or much longer arms. My heart rate after a minute of highly hunched running like a crazy grocery-store daredevil was... somewhere between "HR" and " - - " and "00".
But I emerged having exorcised all fluids otherwise slooshing about in anticipation of a warm day. Yes, as I tend to do in all things, my body tends to preemptively overcompensate when the conditions are likely to require fluids for perspiration. This inevitably results in my carrying a physical stock-pile of fluidity that a camel could covet (my new Ten Commandments themed children's book will be called Carlos the Covetous Camel... he will be eaten by locusts in a very whimsical manner by the end, after doing some naughty things with other men's wives).
But that brings us to yesterday. As you may have heard, we had a lot of trial energy going into this week that more or less fizzled, as is the way with family law trials...(we practice tantric trialing in this field of law: lots of build up, but not really aiming for that final release). We also had a mess of an office.
Pent up energy... boxes of closed filing... mountains of paper... you can imagine where this went. No, we didn't light the place afire and jump a plane for Bermuda (tempting, though). We MOVED BOXES. All morning. Files weigh more than the small children the cases were originally about. At least some of them seem to. I hoisted overhead. I squeezed. I pushed. I pulled. I occasionally lifted from the legs, but mostly from sheer grit and desperation. I remain intact, but certainly my muscles felt it. And have responded accordingly.
Not that I mind the little lactic kvetches... what does not kill us makes us Nietzsche and Conan the Barbarian and all that. I get no kick from champagne, but those slight twinges in new muscles I had forgotten always makes me a little giddy. Still, I'm guessing this might have ever-so-slightly decreased muscle repair and increased muscle fatigue in all the same areas that I'm planning to "strengthen" by weakening today. Since Azita always gets so excited to see me put the weights at the same (comparatively high) settings and says "OOOOOH Look at you" in a way that makes me feel I am possibly a precocious puppy that has just figured out how to ride a unicycle while holding a dog treat on her nose, I'd hate to disappoint her by weakening out. Ah, motivation. Gym buddies. I get it! Social pressure and image trumps all.
I was this close to adding to the potential fatigue by starting the morning off with a good old fashioned blood letting. In my last sludge of medical work, the test came back indicating mild anemia, so I was instructed to take iron supplements for six weeks and retest. Anyways, given that I'm already a bit fatigued and will be working out some more today, AND the fact that I went on auto-pilot and took my high dose iron supplement while eating breakfast this morning, the blood letting has been sagaciously deferred until tomorrow. I mean, is there any better way to start the weekend than horribly sore and minus a few pints of vital essence? I can't think of any...
Survival of the Fittish
Well, while recovering from a hard workout on Tuesday, and an equally grueling round of file-tetris on Wednesday, I still made it to the gym for my regular Thursday routine. I'm happy to say that I survived the fitness; while I may not have been the fittest, I was fit-enough for the requirements. The requirements were as follows:
(1) Drink a lot of coffee. Admittedly, this is actually not a lot a lot. I love coffee and drink it all day long, but I am highly sensitive to caffeine, so I don't drink a lot of real coffee. I drink about two to three cups (not mugs, but cups) of half-caf between 5:00 a.m. and noon. I cannot even look at any form of caf after that time, lest it intrude noisily upon my delicate sleep patterns. But boy one cup of half-caff about twenty minutes before the gym and I'm hippety hopped up;
(2) Change into my sleek yuppie nylon capris and heather shelf-bra of a top; I am soooo stylish.
(3) Shove my festive socks (yes, still Christmas in July for a few more days) into my new running shoes for a satisfyingly awful clash of color-schemes;
(4) Run in my new running shoes to the Y;
(5) Energetically babble at Azita, as the coffee comes into collision against running endorphins and she meticulously transforms herself in the changing room;
(6) Hippity hop on the weird elliptical machine with the really high incline setting (paging ministry of silly stationary walks). We alternate between the traditional elliptical that incorporates the arms, the rowing machines and the weird elliptical machine. Occasionally I can wheedle some time on the treadmill, but due to car-related injuries, Azita can't actually run, so I'm not sure it's her preferred workout;
(7) Continue to bloviate vociferously despite full-on oxygen debt. I have yet to talk myself into a dead faint, but one of these days, I really might. My gym mien alternates between these chatty spells and dead focused quiet spells probably dependent on the quality of coffee recently imbibed;
(8) Pommel off the machine so I can push and pull and squeeze against various mechanical objects, while trying not to stare at other peculiar gym denizens. Not staring is very difficult. People do quite peculiar things at the gym. There are the usual effort related (poor form) contortions people do, but some elevate it to an art... a quite post-post-modern art. When the entire apparatus starts shaking because the user is throwing his/her weight around so much, for instance. When the person's crotch starts thrusting into the air as he (yes, this is always he) tries to add a little extra momentum for an upper body exercise, for another. And when a girl spray-tanned to look like a tree-nymph in a half-rent Community Theater production starts having to jump up and down to get the leg machines to move, and then drapes herself over a stair-master with shoulders hunched above her head, well it's hard to miss;
(9) Roll out sore spots with the masochistic foam roller of simultaneous death and ecstasy. Perhaps be disturbed by the man adjacent to me on the mat, who appears to be stretching in such a manner that requires a stirring bel canto of grunts and groans of agony. I can just hear the tendons snapping;
(10) Less spiritedly waste time in the locker room while Azita reassembles herself. Coffee has usually worn off at this point;
(11) Escort Azita to her office. She is fairly together at this point, so we have perfected our very continental air hug so she does not have to encounter the physical truths of our mutual perspiration.
(12) Run back, stagger up the stairs, make some food, towel down and get back to work.
(13) Throw really disgusting workout clothes in a plastic sack and hopefully remember to actually put them in the wash. Oooooh did you notice we got a new knob? +Andrew Wright has got connections baby. Guess which one is the one he ordered from an industrial manufacturing catalog!!
Having been exsanguinated and finally fed again, I'm thinking I've survived the physical feats of strength and can coast to the weekend with a low profile (hopefully no mental feats shall be required). My veins are sly little buggers but the lady today was quite onto their little tricks and got it on the first try, which never happens. I'll no doubt have a bruise under my massive bandage, but that just makes me feel more bad-ass!
The Gym Bunny Weekend Finale
Day three of my three days a week at the gym is a little bit different than the Tuesday/Thursday days. For one, although I adore Azita and think she does enjoy a bit of impish amusement while working out, I have yet to actually make several doe-eyed kissy faces at her from across the work-out room (potentially confusing several people who incidentally happen to intersect with our line of sight).
For another, I don't usually run into Papa-T on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I also do not literally run into my father on Sunday/Saturday, but I do often wave at his sporty figure astride an elliptical machine. Despite my laser focus on such occasions, I may even stop and chat with him for a few minutes; of course I inherit many personality traits from my parents, so he's just as likely to push the palaver along and get back to his classical tunes, kindle fire, and aerobic nirvana. Longer conversations ensue when +Andrew Wright is involved, being the conversationally patient one that he is.
The day is also just generally differently paced. We start the day with our 53 minute run, for instance. I'm usually quite warmed up and ready to splash off a bit by the time I arrive. While I'm still all wired up, it's from endorphins instead of the usual coffee.
Although, I do generally have a good slurp of coffee in between the run and the gym. Usually. I kind of forgot the coffee mug and couldn't quite bring myself to attempt drinking piping hot coffee from the enormous red (northern European, so you can bet it's well sealed and still steaming) thermos. Being the kind of gal who must feed every few minutes regardless of energy output, I do try to plan for these multi-step workouts in advance. Light snack before heading out, watered down and iced gatorade, soy nuts, raisins, rye crackers (love these, as they are just like me: a little dark, a little bitter, and dry enough for my general tendencies to run wry).
And after the hour of storming the wind with hair battened to my head by several rigging devices (not pictured, as they would unlikely fit into a single photograph), I tend to look quite the impressive whirlwind by the time I make it to the gym. I love my layers. I love the bangs. They are, however, sneaky psychotic little tendrils that cannot be caged!! I do what I can to keep my tresses from devouring small children and animals, but there is only so much that can possibly be done to dent the disarray.
Andrew has a very structured workout in the grunting man section of the gym, so we don't necessarily spend too much time mingling (aside from the occasional kissy faces or elliptical chats with Papa-T). His structured workout is also a fair bit more in depth than Azita's general machine-hopping approach. This combined with the lack of a return deadline (lunch-hour workouts are oddly harried things sometimes), means I can be assured of a longer day at the gym, and can adjust accordingly. Mostly this gives me the leisure to do a larger percentage of the machines I do, and to take a few more seconds of recovery between sets. Recently, the working out part has taken less time, due to the fact that both the warm up and the cool-down are done off-site. At that range, it's just about the same duration as my weekday visits (which include both).
And, of course, the final difference is that instead of brusquely toweling off with wet naps and getting back to work, I get to go home, eat a lot and shower even more. Andrew, of course, hops out of one set of workout clothes into the next and gets back out on his bike to complete his particular brand of insanity... Which works well enough, since there's definitely no dispute over the shower, then!
I believe that counts as your workout for the day, dear readers. You are authorized to go find some gatorade and seek out a sports massage!
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