Sunday 19 August 2012

One Busy Week

Hello!  Haven't meant to not update for so long, it's just been a long busy week.

First off, I did finally make it to the gym.  Both on Monday and Tuesday.  As predicted, I couldn't keep up with all the exercises, but I modified where I had to and kept trying no matter what.  What surprised me though was it wasn't all as bad as I thought it was going to be.  I was expecting to have returned to my initial levels of fitness from before I kicked off this weight-loss thing the first time.  I found out not so.  Well, okay, small fib.  There were one or two points on both nights I wasn't pushing myself all the way I could have, but I felt by doing so, I was restoring my energy stores to do the next activity.
 
Monday was circuit class.  Warm-up: push-ups, crunches (with legs straight up in air), hip flexor thingys.  Then an exercise that made me feel like I was a recruit from an army movie.  Or maybe a football team! Lying on our mats, we had to wait til Jeremy made the call and we had to jump up and run on the spot as quick as we could until he told us go down again.  Repeat.  Definitely got me warm!  About halfway through, felt like my legs were moving super slo mo. 
Circuit included:
  1. Jump-step crossovers on the high step
  2. Passing a swiss ball from our hands to our legs and back, making sure our hands/feet returned to the floor each time;
  3. clean and press with a barbell;
  4. leg curls using the swiss ball;
  5. lifting a medicine ball above our heads and placing it against the wall, then back to squat;
  6. butterfly press on a swiss ball (seeing a theme here yet?);
  7. small medicine ball above our heads, slammed to the ground, squat to pick it up, lay back on the bench, reach above our heads, stand up, repeat (I have no idea how to explain that simpler)
  8. upside-down rowing using a horizontal bar;
  9. and push-ups. 

And the timing we were using to go between exercises was some one was running back and forth up the middle of the room carrying weighted sandbags, one at a time.  I am bad at running, my biggest weak spot in fitness I think.  But at the same time, when I am fit, running is actually enjoyable for me.  Anyhow, in this activity I usually find it hard.  Luckily I volunteered fairly early on to run it, because I would have felt I was keeping everyone waiting, or on their station for way too long as I am slow.

Tuesday was the Tummy Butts and Thighs class.  I don't like I like it as much.  At least, this week I didn't enjoy it.  I may have still been tired from the previous night's class, or it may have been because Kelly wasn't there (she's been sick all week).  Whatever it was, I didn't have fun like I did in Monday's class.  I still worked hard where I could though.

I didn't blog after either of these two days because I was wiped out!  It was tough enough to get home, shower, eat and make lunch for the next day.   I did start to write a blog entry on Wednesday, but I ran out of time. 

Didn't make it to the gym again in the week; Thursday saw a late event (til 11pm).  Friday I had intended to leave work early to go for a walk, but then I got distracted.  I did walk later that evening, however, it was to get an icecream after dinner.  :( Not the best move. 

I've been trying the tactic of reminding myself whenever I want some junk food how much walking/exercise I'd need to do to burn it off.  I discovered it takes 118 min of walking to burn off two pieces of pizza.  Given I usually down 5 slices in one go, that's a lot of walking.  Even if I was doing weights training, I would still need to work for 50min for the two slices.  Ice-cream is 31 minutes of walking.  I only walked ten minutes to get my ice-cream.  Bummer.

However, today I walked some more!! I've been slacking a bit on my walk 100km challenge, but I still feel I can do it, I just have to walk some everyday.   I was in bed with flu and ache yesterday, so I didn't go walking, but I went for a great walk today.  I actually didn't want to stop.  I got to about 50m from home though when my knee started to feel a bit of pain.  I guess 2 hours is my limit.  Yes, I did say 2 hours!  I couldn't believe I went so far and walked for so long!  Admittedly, I did stop for about 5 minutes along the way because there was an echidna in my path.  I thought it was absolutely fascinating!  I've only once before seen one in the wild, so it was beautiful to see it waddle its way right up to my toes. 
http://www.thistasmania.com/flickr-friday-spiny-but-cute/
Not my little guy, but a good example of the colouring

But, minusing that 8 minutes break, I did walk for nearly 2 hours and I think I kept up a decent pace all the way along and didn't slow down and dawdle.  And that two hours did lead me to add another 10.62km to my total! Hooray!  I am of course feeling a bit tired for it now, but I'm still glad that I went on the walk.  My legs felt like they had been used and exercised.  That's what I was missing the other day when I went for the short walk with Imogen.  It's what I often feel I'm missing where I live because the ground is so flat.  When I lived in another city, when I was studying at uni, I was living in a hilly area.   Anywhich direction (or even suburb) I walked in, after an hour, my legs felt exercised, because of the hills.  I really miss that feeling here where it is so flat. 

And that about wraps up the week!  Measurement Monday tomorrow morning, and I bought a digital scale on Wednesday afternoon so I can't weight (hur hur) to try it out.  I really wanted to open it straight away, but I was determined to make Monday mornings my routine.  Breakfast is prepped, I've brushed my teeth, I'm going to bed!

-SunnyDuckling

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