Category: Tales from the Stinky End of the Gym

A Hot Shower in My Future

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As per usual, the beginning of the year brought on new stuff and things: projects, drives, initiatives, etc. All of this translates to calendars that are triple-booked and a lot of that juggling we all euphemistically refer to as “work-life balance”. I have it… if only just.  Outlook keeps me in line. When you have to put in a calendar event to clean the catbox, you’ve gone too far. We are not there. Yet.

Tomorrow I will be on my first real bike ride in about four months, courtesy of the weather, a new job, and enforced socialization. I had the bike checked out today (new tube, otherwise good to go) in hopes of a 30 mile ride tomorrow, the first Official Outdoor Training Ride of 2012… for the STP.

Yes, I know I signed up for it last year. Yes, I know I didn’t do it last year (thank you knees, you are not at all welcome). Fortunately, I’m back in training early enough and cognizant enough of my limitations, my next injection is well ahead of the actual ride date. My only limitation is time — time to train, time to have things to do OTHER than train (you know – Mom/Work/House/Social). It’s a familiar whine.

Being back in the bike shop brought all the old training home though — yes, there’s the Gu, the Sports Beans, the Cliff Bars. And yes, over there is the rear wheel fender I keep meaning to get, so I don’t have the telltale “brown stripe badge”. Over there is the GoreTex jacket I will absolutely, positively not spend $200 on, even though it is in my size and has an appealing lack of pink.

Years ago I was a diver — I still technically am, there’s no expiration date on your certification although I am personally in favor of the idea of recertification. I’ve seen enough people in the water who were first certified fifteen years ago, just got back in recently, and I know that they are a hazard to themselves and others. At any rate– when I was diving, the second best part to it — other than seeing the really cool stuff Puget Sound has to offer underwater — was the hot shower afterwards. After two dives, even in a drysuit, you are cold, you feel dirty, and your muscles hurt — not from the dive, but from wearing 70 pounds of gear down to and up from the water. Diving is not an elegant sport, but it is rewarding. I quit cold water diving due to arthritis and a blase feeling of having seen it all (and I know I’m wrong, so see “arthritis” as chief reason) but I will keep up with warm water diving for the joy of it.

So the secondary joy there was the hot shower, the washing of everything, the loose, cottony feel of your muscles when you were done. I am very much looking forward to that, post-ride, tomorrow. I am MORE looking forward to a time when 30 miles is again “a piddlin’ distance”.

I’ve done 160. Come July, I’ll have done 200.

Say It Ain’t So, Joe

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It has been just over 72 hours since my last PT appointment, and I’m over the psychological moment and can now type about it.

Well, no. It isn’t that bad. I’m headed into my fourth appointment tomorrow, and I am getting the hang of what I have to do: check in, do my “warm up” exercises (which are something of a cross between pilates, ballroom dancing, and the modified shopping cart), “massage” my IT bands (twang!), and then have someone mess with them and then some iontophoresis  (that electrode thingy). Easy-peasy, yes?

Look, all of that is just ducky– the pilates-cum-ballroom dancing is fun –but that IT band messing that someone else does? That is sheer hell.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please meet Joe. Joe was the purveyor of hell on Monday.

Joe is likely my age, because he totally caught my Top Gun reference (he called me Maverick, I told him “negative Ghostrider the pattern is full”). Joe looks like that tennis pro at the club that will totally teach you tennis and take it easy on you and you totally know he’s taking it easy on you.

Joe has sharp elbows. I know this, because part of physical therapy for twangy IT bands? Is to rub them out. With an elbow. Laterally.

This feels something akin to someone giving you a very deep bruise, very slowly, along the outside of your thighbone. After about 2-3 minutes on each side, you are very certain of two things: 1, you don’t ever want to do that again, and 2, that you will be black and blue in seconds.

Joe knows how to not leave marks, which is why we are hoping Joe never breaks out a bar of soap and a sock.

The other negative side of PT (as of late) is because I’m allergic to the leukotape, I have to wait until my skin heals to work out in any way that challenges my knees. So, no Cyntergy, no pilates, no spin class, no running. I am left, essentially, with swimming. Swimming is good — aside from the semi-permanent eau de chlorine that lingers after a session — but it’s gear (and time) intensive. I mean, to get a good 500 calories burned, you go to one (1) 45 minute spin class and you’re done.  You can run some errands in your gym gear, and then shower at home. To get a good 500 calories burned swimming, you need to swim for about an hour, and you must shower before getting into the pool, and then you need to uber-shower when getting out of the pool. Unless you want to soak your car in that same eau de chlorine (there was a time that I did that, to my old ’81 Volvo), you shower at the gym, which necessitates waiting on others who shower at the gym, including small children.  Total time at gym, 2 hours.

All of this, and the Run/Walk/Limp is now officially 8 weeks away, and the STP is about 15. Nervous, me?

No. 🙂

Plus One To Self Worth

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In Dungeons and Dragons (yes, I used to play D&D, get over it) the very first thing you do, once your DM has declared the arena in which you are playing (or RIFTS — we did that too), is you wrote up your Character Sheet. Inevitably a piece of Xeroxed paper, it had check boxes and blank spaces for you to detail your character’s physical appearance, social abilities, physical, mental, and emotional abilities/proclivities, as well as a back story. It was not uncommon for everyone’s character to be a fantastically good-looking crack-shot nuclear physicist and ace-pro lover, ala Buckaroo Banzai, but there would be the “fatal flaw” they’d introduce in their character: you know, to remain interesting.

Life doesn’t hand you a character sheet. You are given the looks you inherit genetically, you are alloted the IQ points that amass themselves in your grey matter. Your character, however, is something you can develop and change. (Yes, you can “train your brain”. Yes, you can use surgery to enhance your physical appearance. But really, your character is something both easier and harder to manipulate, and it’s what we’re discussing here, so let’s ignore the caveats and nota benes, shall we?)

One of the best speeches in recent movie history was in The American President, where Michael Douglas’ president makes the statement that a the upcoming presidential race would be *entirely* about character. Any race: presidential, rat, or otherwise, is about character.

I’ve spent some time evaluating the things about myself I don’t like: I send emails too quickly, I take things to heart too easily, I spend too much time worrying about others opinions, I continue to not have the discipline to have the physique I’d like. Some of these are correctable via self-direction, some of these I will have to run into a brick wall or two in order to acquire the necessary mental note. Others seem doomed to compromise: my weight being one of them. 

I’ve known a few people who have taken stock of their life completely, and turned it around in a fashion amazing to those who knew them well and those who knew them casually. One good friend lost nearly a hundred pounds,  got divorced, acquired all sorts of new hobbies (including running, triathlons, and barhopping); another lost a significant amount of weight (she is not telling, nor should she), stayed married, took control over her education and career and is literally living the dream in Hawaii. Some friends have made changes not so sweeping: leaving an unsatisfying job, taking on new hobbies, reinvesting in their health; I think part of the human condition is to self-evaluate and, for some of us, to target improvements.

I have no idea how much of this is driven by the checklist mentality or the presumptive dopamine rush that comes from living this way. I do know that I have a few things I’d like to change, and maybe if I’m open and outward about them, and write them down, and profess them, if not in a character sheet with 8 or 12 friends and a 20-sided dice but in a blog with 8 or 12 readers and a 20-sided life, maybe then, I can upgrade my character.

Event Driven

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In keeping with my usual way of doing things (e.g., the dopamine rush that one gets from chocolate, online Scrabble, and checking things off of one’s list) I have signed on for a whole bunch of stuff this year. Some I will discuss, and some I will not. There will likely be an announcement of the Not Currently Discussed Items around June or July. But this isn’t about that. Think of it as one of those teaser trailers before the show.

The Events of 2011, at least sporting wise, are:

  • A 5-k run. Yep, I have to get back into running. I’ll be starting a team of at least 10 here at Expedia for the American Lung Association’s annual 5k, and so I shall go forth to the Running Shoe Store where they will provide me with shiny new shoes. Be prepared for posts about sore knees, the amazing physics of excess flab as you run, and whether or not this was really a good idea. Also, I have to raise money.
  • A 2-day double-century bike ride, known as the STP. The Seattle To Portland, more specifically, and training for that has already begun. The fact that as part of training we will be riding 80 miles one day and 80 miles the next which is what I did for The Whole Ride last year is a bit of an eye-catcher.
  • An October stair climb event for the ALA (place to be determined). Again with the raising money.
  • And then, depending on how things went with the 5 k– the Seattle Half Marathon in November. Again.

Folding into this training schedule is that thing I call my job, which I love but which has gone up to 11 as of last November and *stayed there*. When your boss looks at you earnestly and asks you when you’re going to take any time off, and at least three coworkers suggest you need a drink, you may need to take some time off. But when you’re committed to having everything come off PERFECT or at least NOT MESSED UP then you have a hard time putting down the iPhone and the Email. The Job is having me travel a bit this year, including to Geneva (let’s hope my luggage doesn’t get lost) and then there’s personal travel too (hello, Phoenix! Hello, Hawaii!).  Oh, and then there’s boy schedule and its companions of sports and karate and boy scouts and camp and PTSA in there too. Mustn’t forget that.

This year is the first year I’m operating completely without a paper calendar. Usually, I am the recipient of a calendar from a friend who likes dogs, from a family member who defaults to Calendars, and some sort of work gift thing. And this year, I got none of it. My wall at work is empty, my dedicated calendar space at home is devoid of said calendarage. I’m operating completely on my Google and Outlook (syncd!) calendars. It will be an experiment in e-venting, I’m sure.

What I’m discovering thus far is that I need to stick to plans if I’m going to make them. When you put in your calendar that you are going to go to spin class, it’s because you realized two weeks ago when you put that there that you had a 7am call the next day and so you wouldn’t make it to *that* spin class and if you were going to get your required weekly time in the saddle then yes you really did need to do spin class on Thursday. Or when I lay out the menu for the week then I really do need to stick with it because if I wing it and use the potatoes with the pork tenderloin instead of the pasta then that means the chicken has to now go with the rice and you have to put peas with potatoes which takes it away from the cacciatore that was supposed to go with the pasta. Oh, and you end up with really weird menu combinations, which sounds fine for Iron Chef but not for Random Sammamish Hurried Dinner Wednesday.

I have — and love — my iPhone. I may need to expand its applications to help me keep the dopamine rush at a steady state.  Meanwhile, you are to fully expect more e-Venting.

PS — Starbucks is releasing a 31 ounce coffee drink. ‘Nuff said.

Wheels

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I don’t know how to drive a stick shift. Yet.

Learning to drive one is/was part of my “quest for awesomeness”, e.g., my ongoing list of things I should do before I become a useless, shriveled old maid. The fact that I hadn’t learned in my younger days — mind you, at sixteen I could change the oil, transmission fluid, coolant, and tires on a 1981 Volvo — is sad and crippling; my instructor (Mr. W, who is an Aussie and happily accepts payment in gastronomie and vin!) is patient and thorough. I have completed lesson two.

Lesson two involved repracticing start/stop, and that sorta-glidey-thingie you do with the clutch in and the brake off and you’re rounding a corner and going into a parking space. Or something. I also learned to shift up and down, which I need to practice.

Two hours later I was on the bike for the first time in five months. We did but 13 miles courtesy of a blown tire (mine) and only one spare (Duncan’s); it felt *good*. And tomorrow? Tomorrow we enroll for the STP, the Seattle To Portland, 200 miles in 2 days, with a stop (thank whatever God(s) you select) at my mother’s house at the halfway point.

And so January turns! (PS — this week? I lost two of those three awful pounds, and went to the gym 5/7 days). Go me!

New Beginnings

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There are a *lot* of changes I have on the horizon this year, most of which I’m not going to go in to. This is good project management from a “managing up” perspective: if I don’t tell you exactly what I’m planning, you can’t snipe at me that I didn’t quite do what I said I was going to do when I change my way halfway through the year based on the newer data. But trust me, when we get to the end of the year, you’re totally going to be amazed at all of the changes.

Seriously, I don’t do that in my work life. In my work life, I typically have the goal-promising restraint of say, Superman, and the social skills of say, Batman, and the subtlety of say, the Thing. I have no idea if they all belong to DC comics or Marvel or if I’ve mixed superheroes who oughtn’t. That’s your job, I’m just metamorphizing here.

At any rate, many things planned! Many goals to achieve! They are not resolutions, though, because that would be stifling. One of them includes increased fitness and banishment of the three (3) lbs gained over the holidays. Please note I am not blaming my mother. This is not just because she reads my blog; this is because the actual weight gain was realized *after* Christmas and I can only assume we lay the blame squarely at Top Pot’s door. However, please do note that I was attending my gym spin classes 2x-3x per week and Group Cyntergy the other day of the week (so that’s 3-4 times per week, got me, kiddo?) that I was going regularly pre-Christmas.

Oh My Goodness, the Resoluters are in. Spin Class (Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday) and Group Cardio (weightlifting) Monday, and the Pool yesterday? All completely packed. The parking lot? Packed. The gym is full of Resoluters, and the office has a waiting group of people eager to sign over what amounts to four figures per year to attend. I do not blame them, I do the same thing. But I’ve been doing it longer, and somehow that entitles me to all of the self-satisfied snobbery a person can develop. I don’t mind Resoluters, per se. I mind that they all come at ONCE.

If you think about it, New Years Day is an abstract day. There is no logical reason (with exception of the break between December and January as provided by the Romans, who by the way went from 10 months to 12 by shoving in 2 more months (one for Julius and one for Augustus Caesars, guess which months those are?)). Most Asian cultures celebrate a different day for New Year, as did the Mayans and Aztecs. The fact that we choose Jan 1 is completely arbitrary; to my way of thinking we would be better off to choose December 21 or March 21 or June 21 or September 21 (and if you want to know why look up “solstice” and “equinox” — although to my way of thinking Dec 21 makes the most sense). However, I am not yet the Dictator and I do not get to choose, so stuck with January 1 am I.

It would be ever so much nicer, though, if we took the extra — call it 100? 200? — people who come in for the New Year, throughout the year. My spin class would go from say, 10-12 in December to 12-14 in January to 14-16 in February, etc. Not from 10-12 in December to 30-32 in January. That causes consternation, awkward bike positioning, and massive delays while we have the instructor take time to set up all the newbies properly on their bikes. Tuesday’s class started 10 minutes late courtesy of the new folks. Again, wouldn’t mind so much if they came early. Or spaced themselves out. But please, not all at once. I give it four more weeks before the real bleed off happens (I hope).

I am totally caffeinated by the way, and we will blame my new CoHort at work. His floor has no shiny coffee maker and so there is no decaf to be had.

Resolve

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I have no resolutions this year.

Available data indicates that I’m not terribly good at keeping them, and that the things that need to get done get done anyway. Ergo, no formal resolutions. There is the list, which is the same list I tackle every year. This year includes finally learning to drive a stick shift (lesson two is next Saturday) and learning to ski; there is also some plan to get my Spanish back in gear. Oh, and there’s the STP and apparently I’m back in a book club (thanks, Carla).

I have no problem with other people’s resolutions… save one. The gym resolution. Now, many folks resolve to get in shape in the new year. Some have attainable goals (I’m going to lose 10 pounds! 20! 30! in 2/4/6 months!). Some have wildly fantastic goals (I’m going to lose 50 pounds by April!). And one and all, they arrive at the gym on 2 January, clogging up my classes. For those of us who were there the day before Thanksgiving and on December 23rd, as well as December 27th, 28th, 29th, and 30th, the inevitable barrage of well-intentioned people into the gym class means that we have to get to each class extra extra early (example: proper etiquette is to arrive at spin class 5 or even 10 minutes early to get your bike, fill your water, acquire the appropriate towelage, figure out if you really want to be behind *that* person, if you really want to be in front of *that other* person, etc. In the Resoluter Month, you need to arrive 20 minutes early to do all that *and* navigate around the newbies).

I would wager that most of these folks are gone by the end of January — maybe February. So it’s a discomfort of short duration. I think I can get through that. And if that’s the most I have to complain about, well, then, my life’s pretty darned good.

Subject To Good Behavior

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Well, I’m back in the saddle again. I gained 4 pounds over the Holiday(s), and part of it was not going to the gym as often as One Should. So this week has been a week of going to the gym and eating Lean Cuisine for dinner, which is just about as enchanting as it sounds. Don’t get me wrong, a good point of spin class is that Instructor Deb (the former cheerleader) has some excellent tunes. A good point of weights class is they vary the routine so often you’re pretty much ready to switch up when they are.

Is it bad that I spent my entire hour of weightlifting class fantasizing (as my muscles burned and twitched and shook uncontrollably, especially toward the end) about what I would *eat for dinner*? Knowing that it would be a Lean Cuisine? I think so.

Something that I’ve learned: Lean Cuisines will warn you in very STERN TERMS that they should be cooked properly. The shrimp pasta one will insist you cook it until the shrimp reach 165 degrees. Tell me: do YOU stick a thermometer into your shrimp pasta when you cook it? I do not. I cooked it until those suckers were pinky orange. If I’m dead due to undercooked shrimp tomorrow, now you know why.

Something else that I’ve learned: the guy in the weightlifting class who has the most to prove will wimp out fastest. This is an hour of loading up a bar, lifting it above your head, doing deadlifts, doing lunges with it behind your neck, doing crunches with it above your head, etc. This is not a lightweight (no pun intended) class. So YOU, Mr. loaded your bar up to prove something, you really oughtn’t’ve, and when you give up on your overhead lifts (shoulders and biceps, yo!) instead of just downweighting, it’s very sad. For you. Also, don’t wear those shorts anymore. They’re too loose and when you lift your legs for bicycle crunches I know WAY too much about you.

More sad is that I’ve spent the night (not including a conference call) watching Food TV. That’s right: I worked out to the point of shaking, I ate my 300-calorie Lean Cuisine, and now I’m watching Guy Fieri stuff his face at multiple restaurants. Tonight’s theme is apparently Italian, and if you think that some parts of my brain are screaming at other parts of my brain in what we ought to do about that, you’re right.

I could spit, but it would just burn calories.

Late to Class

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Everyone has that nightmare: it’s final exam day and you’re completely unprepared and possibly naked in class. Or you’re extremely late to class. Or unprepared in some other way. Or both.

Today I was.

And was again.

I was checking through the site of my nice fancy gym as to which class was available at the time I needed to go today — craziness abounded what with the car coming back from the shop — and discovered a good one about an hour from when I was checking. An hour later I found myself at the gym and went to the room where there is usually the pilates/sculpt kind of classes I go to. When I arrive they’re already in to the routine — there are scary looking poles and bars and barbells and pads and steps and stuff, but it’s all good I can do it. I found an empty spot, acquired equipment, laid down and did some wicked crunches for about 5 minutes…

…and class ended.

I had attended the wrong class.

I left that room and checked the other room that I’m less often going to and sure enough, there were ladies with pilates balls and mats doing interesting stretchy things, and they were 8 minutes into it. So not only was I late to class, but I was late to TWO classes, and completely unprepared. I did my 50 or so minutes, complete with odd twists and turns that make my butt feel (this evening) like it wants to fall off.

This was not as bad as the dream I have where it’s vertebrate histology and they tested us off of six slides on the projector — and actually, that happened in real life — but still. Quite embarrassing.

Score One for the New Girl

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OMG OMG OMG O YOU GUYS!

I was totally right.

The Group Power instructor (Group Power being the hold these large barbells and do things like lunges and squats and lifts and all that in time with the Bee Gees and Twisted Sister, I so kid you not) WAS A CHEERLEADER! I totally called it. No one can have that much fun with a large group of people doing something that most would find only circumstantially appropriate.

Oh, fine, thus endeth the cheerleader hate. (I wasn’t one in high school, could you tell?)

Also, this was my second Group Power class. And I doubled my weight (no, not what I weigh, but what I lifted and hoisted and “singled” and “doubled” and all that). I am feeling very very good. I know I will be feeling very very sore tomorrow, but we aren’t there yet.

In other news, my latest big unwieldy project at work hopes to deliver on Wednesday, the boy is wrapping up soccer this week, and I am going to the ballet (alone! and I’m glad!) on Thursday.

I think I’ll get strangers to take a picture of me there with my iPhone.