Target Practice

Well, it’s been nearly two weeks since my last update, packed full of goals as it was. What’s occurring?

1. Stairs

These are a lot easier now. I am firmly into the habit, despite having to occasionally leave a colleague or two looking mournfully out past the closing lift doors at me. It’s rare I don’t make it up the stairs in the same time as the lift takes, more or less, which is heartening. I wouldn’t say I’m entirely non-breathless, but (unless I take the stairs two at a time, which I sometimes like to do on the final flight, and even then) I’m a lot less breathless when I reach my desk.

So that’s nice.

2. Lunchtime Walks

This has been going pretty well. I’ve managed to do this (or roughly this) every workday lunchtime, and have even fitted in a couple on non-workdays (walking to Newmarket Road and back on Wednesday - 1.4 miles either way; walking to Milton Country Park on Sunday - 1.5 miles either way). In fact, I definitely seem to have hooked into the “feeling weird if I don’t do it” vibe pretty quickly. In terms of goals, I do seem to have upped my pace for the lunchtime walks, which is groovy, though measuring inconsistencies (the first few times I kept forgetting to switch off the recording device until I had been pottering around in the canteen for a few minutes) mean that it’s hard to say whether I would have recorded a lower completion time in the first few anyway... However, the mean pace is consistently better (though sometimes a little slower than my average if I’m walking with someone else - getting breath to speak and all that). That one feels like a solid win so far (though I’ve had few weather challenges to overcome), even though I do feel like a dapper gent taking a lunchtime constitutional (yes, I do wear my famous hat).

3. Isometrics

Bloody isometrics. Well, I’ve finally hit upon a way to do them at least once a day - tag them on the end of my morning physio. Fuck it. I can always to an end-of-working-day one as an extra, but I’ve had trouble working that in, so I’ll at least have that one. I’ve only done this twice now, though, so no stats yet.

Time for some other goals/ feedback

4. Hydration

I’ve been using the FitBit to monitor my water intake. It’s a bit rubbish, which I knew it was, so I’ve been using various methods to improve that, and (apart from this morning, because Monday morning, amirite?) I’ve been doing pretty well. Not, you know, excellently, but better. And my evidence on the benefits on days with proper hydration in them is fairly bloody empirical, but you don’t want those details.

Advantages: All of them? Good for digestion, skin, metabolism, oh yeah and staying alive.

Disadvantages: Obviously I need to wee more. That’s part of the point though, so hey.

Goal: Get up to drinking about two litres of water a day without having to poke myself in the head to do so.

5. Fitstar

As previously reported, I selected the “Get Strong” program from Fitstar, packed full of strength-building and cardio exercises in three-times-a-week, twenty-minute sets. So far it has not proved onerous to do the three sessions a week (so far Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays), though it’s significantly easier to not feel self-conscious when bobbing up and down to some perky fitness expert’s generic instructions when no-one’s in the house. (“Tighten those abs!” “Remember to keep a straight back!” “Keep it light - land on the balls of your feet!”) And the program does seem to keep track of which exercises I label “Too Easy!” and “Brutal!”, pushing me where I’ve indicated I’m up for that and not where I’ve said “Nope”.

Unfortunately, there are a fair number of exercises which require the adherent to put weight on one or both knees. After gingerly trying a couple of these and suffering both math and aftermath, I now instantly skip any with weight-bearing knee forms, label them “Brutal!” and indicate that I’ve done zero. Apart from the “press-ups from knee” which I do from the toes. So.

The exercises get my heart-rate up and many are moves I’d never have considered (read: in some cases didn’t even know they were A Thing). Some are nearly impossible to do properly in my living room, so require improvisation, improved immensely when I realised that I could pause the instructions while I rearranged things to roughly match.

Apart from some tightness and pain in and behind my knees which felt terrifyingly like a return to horrible old symptoms of 2011/12 until I ruthlessly did all the right things to loosen stuff, these exercises appear to be taxing me exactly the right amount.

Goal: Just keep going and ingrain the habit.


6. Weight

Argh. So, the side-effect of being more active? Yep - weight-loss. Which, in my case, is a bugger, and leads to friends advising me to eat more, and put on some weight.

I. Am. Trying. Believe me.

The balance of “types of food that won’t fuck with my now-shitty digestive system”, “quantities of food/ drink that won’t fuck with my now-shitty digestive system”, “time periods of ingestion that won’t fuck with my now-shitty digestive system”, and “oh, yeah, I’m still allergic to loads of stuff” with “go on, eat more and put on weight” is proving... problematic.

I am going to try protein shakes next. Because fuck it. There’s been very little advice online about this, and most of it is: “Hey, ladies, you don’t want to put on loads of fat (urrgh, fat), you probably mean you want to pile on lean muscle; here, have an avocado.” And while a) avocados are nice (especially mashed up with bacon and garlic-infused olive oil on brown toast), and b) more lean muscle would also be nice, c) I am finding it hard to keep warm when stationary and my less-padded arse has difficulty sitting for extended periods of time, especially on hard surfaces, dammit. A significant number of “weight gain diets for women” searches have led to the above advice, or even straight to weight-loss advice because apparently I don’t know what I’m talking about plus Western culture’s obsession with thinness = healthiness which gjjh&*HJ*$%&Jkj, basically.

Any advice on this would be super-gratefully received. In the meantime, I’m due to see the gastroenterologist in October, and I’m going to ask for a referral to a dietician/ nutritionist for this very reason, because at least they won’t advise me to eat more eggs, unlike even the actually vaguely helpful websites do. (I am super-allergic to eggs.)

And how is this all making you feeeeel?

Ah, that one. (How about super fucking hungry all the time?) Well, I’m feeling a bit more confident about my body and its ability to cope with physical challenges. I’m also enjoying the fact that I appear to be (slowly) gaining a measure of discipline over a lot of these things, which in turn makes me feel better about myself, which in turn makes me more likely to Do Things Right, so...

I’m also noticing a (unexpected at this stage) small but significant set of changes to my body shape and, well, the best word I can think of is texture. Specifically:

• there appears to be more intense wall of muscle around my abdomen, especially evident when standing.


• My thighs and calves are definitely more heavily muscled. Again, this is more evident when standing, but the calves, in particular, seem to be changing shape even at rest. Their texture at rest is different. Sorry - I can’t explain it better than that they’re denser? less wobbly? Maybe...


• My forearms also have this change of texture. Not that they were ever particularly wobbly, but... yeah, they feel denser.


• My biceps appear no different, but my triceps appear more defined, especially when my arm’s extended.

I am stiff a lot of the time - sitting still really does cramp me up, but I seem to be recovering quite well each time. And maybe some of that recovery is more psychological - I’m expecting my body to be more in command, so just act as though it’s going to be fine, and it is.

My digestive health is... mixed. I am trying to eat larger meals and that’s causing me pain and bad reflux issues, including impacting on voice and breathing. On the other hand, I know better how to deal with that, so that’s passing faster and I’m panicking less. Mostly.

Spent two weeks saying how great it is to have my voice back. Woke up today with it as scratchy and painful as before. Send hope, please.

— Fay Roberts (@fayroberts) September 17, 2017

Oh well. It still cleared up within a few hours, so that was nice.

I’d like to say I’m sleeping better, but that’s a Whole Other Thing that we’ll have to address in a separate blog post, possibly a couple of months down the line when all this has bedded in properly.

Haha. Bedded in? Bedded... Bed. Coz sleep, coz. Yeah. Ahem. Anyway. See you soon!

Back in the Saddle

Blimey. It’s been over a year since I last updated this. So what’s happened in the World of Fay Health & Fitness since then?

1. Injured myself at home on the actual day of that event. Foolishly. Luckily, it’s a neck injury I’d had before, so this time I didn’t piss around, got hold of a physiotherapist (my old one having semi-retired), and got into a bunch of new, neck-related exercises.
    
2. After recovering from foolishness, continued to do lots of cycling, but just back on a daily, get-everywhere-I-don’t-need-to-transport-gig-gear/people kind of way.
    
3. Got back into mat exercises - press-ups, crunches, planks - plus the fun addition of chin-ups, courtesy of a bar you can slot above the doorframe (and a stack of books to stand on, because I’m not that tall (despite being tall for a poet), and our house is old, so the ceilings - and therefore doorframes - are high).
    
4. Went to the Edinburgh Fringe in August to take part in the usual shenanigans, which, from a health perspective, involved:
   
   Positives: a bunch of weight-lifting (hauling my crap up six flights of stairs virtually single-handedly as my flatmate had a hernia); walking 2-3 miles/ day up and down a very steep hill (luckily, I lived at the bottom of the hill), sometimes more if I had to go home and change between shows; continuing with the daily physio exercises and the twice-a-week, more hench mat exercises.
   
   Negatives: bad/ little sleep; the usual dehydration and when-the-fuck-do-I-eat issues leading to a little weight loss; abundant and often unnecessary stress (necessary stress I can deal with).
    
5. On the final couple of days had a troubling cough and sore throat, which I powered through on sheer adrenalin and stubbornness, which transmuted into a cold as soon as I started the long drive home through the night.
    
6. Cold turned into a chest infection and laryngitis, and then… and then I couldn’t speak, sing, or anything vocal, couldn’t bend over to pick things up, couldn’t lie down flat, couldn’t eat much, was constantly coughing and had chest pains and stomach pains, and then the bit where my throat kept closing off, stopping my breathing, all of which made sleep difficult.
    
7. I lost a LOT of weight. And no-one seemed to know what was wrong. Everything hurt, everything made me cough, and the only thing I’d ever relied on my whole life - my voice - was gone. And no-one seemed to know beyond a shrug whether it would ever come back.
   
   I pushed on through work, though had a lot of sickness leave, including after a trip to A&E (waking up in the middle of the night entirely unable to breathe and retching mucus) when I was signed off for a couple more weeks after I’d only just got back to work.
   
   As you can imagine, my mental health took a steep and long fucking dive. And even the physio exercises were out for a long time because of the aforementioned not being able to lie down flat, so my joints started to suffer in a major way. I slept (hell: I lived) on the sofa for about three months for fear of waking everyone constantly with the coughing and the terrifying choking noise that happened every time I dropped into proper sleep, even when propped up perpendicularly. It was bad enough that I wasn’t sleeping…
   
   It was horrible. And then there was the (thankfully apparently a clerical error?!) cancer scare.
    
8. Slowly my voice returned to something that was at least audible (though it’s currently fucked again - yay) as I learned what I can eat and not eat (I’m even more limited now than I was before), and which drugs and supplements help and which are, at best, useless.
    
9. They still don’t know what’s wrong, but the latest notion is to put me on a very low dose of something that, at much higher doses (like: fifteen times higher), is used as an anti-depressant.
    
10. I’ve recently got back on the bike. I am still horribly unfit. But I was haemorrhaging money trying to get around town and this is worth it long-term.
     
11. I’m even more recently back on the mat exercises, after I managed to injure myself doing ill-advised free weight-lifting (yes, again) a couple of months ago, and put a crimp in the cycling and some of the physio for a while.
     
12. I’m not living my best life right now, and I think the definition of that is going to have to change, but hey - who needed creative career plans anyway…?
     

I thought I’d go back to the blog because I actually wanted to ask some dietary advice, but I’ll leave that until the next entry, because it’s a bit much to cram into a catch-up post as well…

Thanks for reading (and, to some of you, waiting so patiently).

Today is the first day...

... of the rest of the working year.

(I appreciate that some of you may have worked between 24th December and today - sorry about that! I, however, have not. Benefits of working for an academic-related organisation, I guess...)

So! :) How’s it been going for you lot? Me, I’ve been powering through the day on rampant optimism and a renewed determination to prove to myself that I am a worthwhile human being (I have had too little broken sleep - more about this in another post, I suspect). In fact, that’s the core of my “resolution” for this year - basically: feel better about myself.

Obviously there are various different elements to this (i.e. pretty much every aspect of my life! :)), but for each one I do actually know what I need to do, I’ve just not always been doing it. So, in order to inspire myself, I reckon I just need to keep that clear “feel better about myself” goal in front of me every time I find myself wussing out and cutting corners. Because when I work at doing things right, I feel better about myself.
 
Ludicrously simple; diabolically difficult.
 
I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. I generally start on projects/ changes/ movements that look like them in December, when it’s dark, and miserable, and cold, partly to prove to myself that you don’t need a set date to kick off Doing Stuff Right, just a good mindset. Sometimes I start them in April, or February. Or on a Thursday or something. Because I know that if I keep waiting for some kind of perfect kick-off signal, I’ll keep on finding excuses.
 
I have a narrow line to walk here - let me introduce you to the brain weasels (I’m not going to dignify them with title case): they represent the snarly, snide, tricksy little bits of me that are always looking for reasons to put me down. They say tiny, mean things - their sharp, narrow teeth and sinuous forms are slippery and insistent. They are composed of fear and are like handy little pocket abusers - you may even have left the originals behind, but they’ve sowed tiny, portable, conveniently-sized memes to take with you everywhere. (I’m sure you know the kind of thing they like to say: you’re not good enough, you’re a failure, you’re a disappointment.) They snigger every time you trip or drop things or run late. And I do those things a lot... They represent the opposite of “you are a worthwhile human being”.

They’re wretched little bastards and they need to be stopped. Or, okay, well, transmuted somehow.
 
The ways to beat brain weasels need to be as multitudinous and flexible and cunning and (nearly as) small as they are. Because the more you give in to their assertions about your worth, the more you’ll give up putting effort into doing stuff right, and the more fodder there’ll be for their grindy little teeth. I’ve seen this negative spiral demonstrated very clearly in my physical health, and it’s all too evident in my mental health, if you know where to look.  I want to get a series of positive spirals going - feel better, do better, feel better, do better, feel better, do better, feel better, do better...
 
What’s the narrow line? Well, years of playing host to the weasels has left me with some difficult-to-repurpose mental constructs in which the furry little gits flourish. And one of them is where I find it really, really difficult to take compliments. Because I may know fine well that the weasel runs are ridiculous, and that they make me miserable, but I’m used to them, see? They’re home. They’re where I’m comfortably miserable.  So the more loudly people are nice to me, the less I can take it. I get so overwhelmed with this enthusiastic evidence that at least part of me looks dramatically different to the Worthless Map of Fay (© Weasel Enterprises) that I throw up as many big walls as I can to stave off the information overload. Go too far and I cry and shake and run away. Literally. It’s messy.

Slowly I’ve been working on my anti-weasel techniques. I’m being scientific about it, which means being better at spotting both negative and positive patterns, instead of taking either states for granted or treating them as neutral. I have learned that the following things are particularly good at helping silence/ squish weasels:

1. Walking. Anywhere, at any time. But it needs to be fast/ vigorously. At my own pace, anyway. 
    
2. Dancing. Stomp on their little heads! Drown them with music! Okay, maybe just stun them into submission and muffle their annoying squeaks to the occasional half-hearted “you’re too old to be doing this!” (Yeah, I’m manifestly not, so shut up! :D) 
    
3. Hosting performances. You’d think that the nerve-wrackingness of this and the massive potential for tripping up (Get the names wrong! Stutter! Offend someone accidentally!) along with opportunities for jealousy would be fodder for the invisible shit-stirrers, but somehow: no. I enjoy the performances too much to be jealous, and frankly, when you’re running an event, you have no time for weasels. 
    
4. Spending time with particular friends. You know the type - diverting yet supportive as appropriate. Also: the wider I allow my network to be, the better my chances of spending time with people whose personal styles will fit the mode I need to be in. And the less chance of the weasel who says “you’re just a burden to your friends!”  
    
5. Properly singing something I know well. There’s a pattern emerging. 
    
6. Spreadsheeting. Doing something both systematically and creatively. It’s something I have developed good... wait... excellent, expert skills in, and it’s something I can sit quietly and nerd out over.

The answer appears to be: do things irrefutably well with good people. Keep pushing at (sometimes tiny) increments of What Could Be Even Better so that the evidence for being worthwhile mounts manageably. Get the adrenalin flowing. Allow meaningful connections with other humans. Demonstrably build up the ability to be more awesome.

It’s not about comfort blankets (because the more moping/ eating crappy food/ taking a taxi rather than cycling/ playing dumb computer games I do, the worse I feel) but about strapping in tightly before heading off towards the horizon, laughing uproariously and whooping at the steep bends.

So I will be giving myself tiny compliments. Every day. Not ignoring the bad stuff (because weasels loooove it when you’ve got stuff you’re procrastinating over - oh my yes!), but aiming for the kind of objective approach I’d use with someone who isn’t me. And also coming up with ways to improve things.  In other words, I’ll be running a Lessons Learned on my life. Every day, if I can, no matter how vestigially, sometimes.

And, in the meantime: getting fitter, having more fun, and being more awesome, a bunch of which I’ll be posting on here. :)

Just Do It #4

Quick, throwaway "motivational" phrases can be helpful, especially when you're exhausted and your body's drenched in adrenalin, and the buffer zones of carefully-constructed cognition are crumbling in the face of your inner waaah that just wants to give up and go home and, incidentally, eat a large plate of biscuits, or possibly ALL THE CHEESE.  So this tag series is for those small pre-fabricated tools that help me get the chuff on with it.

So, my lovely mattress has given up the ghost.  This, along with a dodgy, cheap pillow (below the expensive, super-supportive one), are helping neither the Neck/ Shoulder Injury of Doom™ nor my already crappy sleep quality.  In the course of following up on what happens when you Google "best mattress for hypermobility" (turns out I got it spot-on with the Wondermattress - go my instincts, go!), I came across this blog:

http://www.lifewitheds.com

The author has way more invisible conditions than I have (including some I'd never heard of), but had documented her search for The Perfect Mattress (for, among other things, hypermobile joints), so I was intrigued to read (along with various forum posts) about how difficulty getting exactly the right sleeping posture is very common among those with HMS and EDS.

Scrolling down, on the right, I saw this:


Do what you can, when you can, while you can:

Seemed to pretty much sum it up for me.

The Secret of the Pyramids

We have a shorthand in my household when people are emotionally up against it: "Maslow?"  It's even become a verb: "What should I do?" "Well, to start off, Maslow it."

What are we talking about?  I used to teach this as part of my A Level Psychology course, and I figure (despite its limitations), that it's a good tool:

Here's the thing - it's really hard to do that brain stuff that you need to do when you're hungry, tired, thirsty, or scared of basic stuff.  So if you're suffering from low brainwidth, deal with a couple of the lower rungs of Maslow first.

In a brain-flap? Drink some water.  Right now.  Get some water in you. Okay, now you've dealt with that, how do you feel about carbohydrates?  That's good news - here's a cookie^*.  Right, now we've dealt with that, what do you need to do next?  Is this an emergency, or can it wait until you've had a nap?  Okay, well, have another cookie^* and let's work out the rest of this.

In other words, you need all the resources you can actually get hold of (instead of punishing yourself for feeling bad, coz that works excellently well as both a long- and short-term strategy...) in order to deal with brain stuff.

I am crabbit at the moment, partly because my sleep is off and I've been in an amount of pain (though better today due to yesterday's interventions), partly because Everything Happens At Once seems to be one of those things.  I'm feeling overwhelmed, in short, and I'm going to write a poem about it full of emotive symbolism and all but, in the meantime, I'm going to deal with what's in front of me so that I can deal with things a few steps away.  And this may also mean telling Everything Else to back off a couple of steps, thanks.

I will eat lunch shortly, and go to the gym tonight. I will then eat well and early and I will sleep, by all the gods, because the world's a more dangerous place when I haven't.

And now, just to cheer you up, a picture of a crabbit (alternate definition):

__________________________

^* substitute dried fruit/ banana/ boiled egg/ whatever works for you at this point.

Bleh

Today is a Bad Joints Day.  Not only the usual suspects: Borked Shoulder, Particularly Bad Knee, Grinchy Neck Section, Dodgy Wrist, and Whingey Lower Back, but pretty much everything else as well.  The knees feel swollen, and everything is particularly clicky, achey, or twisted.

Yay.  No gym for me tonight.  This, combined with general increase in clumsiness and fine motor control near-absence today and yesterday leads me to conclude several things:

1. Sleep deprivation is a major key in pain perception/ management

Sleep has been very absent lately, especially over the last two nights.

2. I need to drink more on busy days

Like way more.

3. I have entered the "secretory" phase of my menstrual cycle

O hai progesterone, come to make a fuss, have you?

4. Standing around lots really does knacker my knees, especially when carrying heavy stuff

Seriously.

5. There may be some other factor that I'm not figuring in that is pulling everything else out of alignment

e.g. diet (sugar? acid? protein? calcium? something else?), the actual weight carried while walking/ standing, emotional stress, etc.


One of the things that worries me about, well, all of the above, is that the weekend of The Walk is a busy one, and that's got some real implications for stamina/ injury/ enjoyment on the day and recovery afterwards.

The day/ evening beforehand is a choir concert.  Judging by last time, this means: lots of standing; not much fluid intake (you don't want to rush to the loo in the middle of the gig); and a late night finish, which includes eating late.  Boo.

On the evening of the the day itself is a poetry gig that I run.  Judging by, well, every time, this means: a fair amount of standing; lots of heavy lifting (including up and down stairs); not much fluid intake (as organiser, you find yourself forgetting); and a really late night finish, which includes eating late. Double-boo.

And both will involve a fair amount of emotional stress, of different types, as well as likely to be taking place during the same less-than-ideal phase of my menstrual cycle.

Oh dear.

The Big Day is five weeks away and I have, as yet, to do any of the long walks necessary to check my ability to walk the increasingly long distances on the graph on the way up to six whole miles.  I just typed the phrase "Things keep getting in the way." and looked at it in disappointment and a measure of horror.

Oh deary me.

So the next five weeks are going to see:

1. A new sleep strategy (and set of tactics to match)

Don't ask me yet - I need to work this out.

2. A dry run of "drinking more and standing around less" for the next poetry event

Can't hurt...

3. More physio advice

She offered something I was tempted to take her up on.  Now that looks like a Very Good Idea Indeed™

4. Cracking on with the nutritionist advice

Any suggestions for good ones in Cambridge?

5. A new mattress

Mine is completely scuppered; time to spend some money.

6. Actually doing a long walk

No excuses.

7. Reading up more on hypermobility

There must be more I could be doing that I haven't thought of yet...


So watch this space, basically.

Back on the Wagon

In the end, I had five days with no other exercise but walking, and even then not much. I'm disappointed, if truth be told - while I chose wisely not to for the first three days, the other two were littered with excuses and bad planning.

Oh well; changing patterns of thought are unlikely to happen overnight. I shall look on this as a learning opportunity...

In other, more positive news: I got back into things while staying over at my family's at the weekend, and felt the better for it, though my abs kept saying really?! I missed the chance to get a long walk in, though, which was a shame, but visiting my mum's grave with my dad (the first time we've done that, it suddenly occurs to me, since her funeral in '99) took precedence.

Anyway, a week later than anticipated (planned, that is), I went for the "Walk all the way home after work" goal.  Some numbers for the stats heads, according to my Google Tracks app:

Distance: 2.6 miles

Putative Calories Burned: 273

Total Time: 41:40

Average Speed: 3.74 mph

(There's all sorts of stuff about moving time and average moving speed, which seems confusing to me, but hey...)

All of which is rather positive, I think.  Good speed, didn't stop for any significant amount of time except at a pedestrian crossing, during which I kept my legs wiggling, like a very slow, over-dressed jogger.  I didn't hurt too much during the walk itself, and I even stretched out when I got home.

Today my legs are so very far from fussed I'd almost forgotten I'd done it.  Well, I say that.  They weren't during the day, but now they're grumbling, especially in the knees, and I can't help but wonder if 2.6 miles at a fast trot followed by fairly intensive sessions on the stationary bicycles the next day was entirely wise.

Heigh-ho.  You'll be wanting a progress report then?

Diet (as opposed to dieting)

I'm eating well, enjoying food, and stubbornly substituting dried fruit and more water for biscuits and flapjack.  Tonight I sat there, in our currently freezing kitchen, after an extremely satisfying meal of home-made stew with potatoes and fresh bread, and wondered what was wrong.  I started externalising the conversation I was having sotto metis in my head to highlight to myself how ludicrous it was:

"But I want a biscuit."

"You've eaten more than enough, you're just tired."

"Biscuits! I can see them!"

"Sorry - no biscuits for you..." etc.  It seemed to work.

(Although I'd quite like a biscuit right about now.  Maybe I'll go to sleep instead.)

Sleep

I've got to do something about this.  I'm more tired from physical exertion, so my sleep quality's better, I just need to work on the quantity. Dammit.

Physio

Apart from the blip (it was a blip!) that was last week, doing well on this score.  It's getting a tad easy, though, which means that, presumably, I run the risk of getting bored by it and not doing it.  Doing it first thing in the morning keeps it more difficult (laxer muscles to overcome), and I can do that time-wasting reading the news thing that I would usually do slumped on the sofa when I arguably should be getting ready for work...

Mat exercises

Going very well.  20 reps is almost easy now, and my planks (even the repeated ones in later sets) are more reliably 60 seconds (or close) at a time.  So I've started adding in some new ones (wide-arm press-ups!  Yay! Holy damn that's difficult!), and will continue to do so (I foresee flying press-ups - where you swing one arm up at a time after coming back up - scissor kicks, and - in a month or so's time I suppose - gym ball gubbins; that'll keep me occupied...)

Gym

I failed to consider that doing longer sets of the endurance stuff (bikes, rowing machine, etc.) would mean that I spend longer overall at the gym.  That tiny miscalculation (and missed bus) aside, this is going pretty well too.

Up to 16.5 minutes on the bikes (the magical 20 minutes is almost within sight!), with variations of difficulty to - again - keep me from getting bored and doing it wrong.  I'm also listening to music and reading the Kindle app on the phone during the "flat" stretches.  And watching the man who does Epic Lunges down the length of the cardio part of the gym.  Luckily, I am too breathless, generally, to shout "Why so serious?!"

Maximum reps on the free weights is starting to get easy.  I think next week I go up a whole 0.5kg!  Onto the Big Girl Weights, where they have textured chrome bars and black hexagonal ends!  Yay! :D

I'd forgotten how ace rowing machines are.  I'd also forgotten that people are as crap at putting the handles back to the right slot for the next person as they are re-stacking their weights.

Oh hell - I'm turning into a gym bore!

No, no, it's okay - I'm allowed/ supposed to on here.

I saw a lot more people that I know in the gym today.  Tuesday appears to be People Fay Knows Day at that particular grunt emporium.

And no, I still haven't got used to the guttural gasps emitted by men with weights, the higher-pitched, sobbing exhalations of women at the end of their sets.  This, I have decided, is why people wear earphones - not to distract themselves from the boredom of repetitive exercise, not to dedicate themselves to their fitness in aural isolation, but to prevent themselves from getting needlessly aroused by the sounds of the others around them.

There's a poem in that, I'll wager...

And that's it, I reckon.  This weekend I'll need to walk 3.5 miles to be up to the mark; I'll let you know how that goes!