All posts tagged exercise

Exercise and Training

I found an interesting workout thing online (pinterest, oh how I love thee), and this is week the second of trying to start it.  It’s about an hour (for me) of doing a series of 8 exercises, all of which can be done from your own home, Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  So far, I’ve made it through the Monday exercise twice.  Weeknights are busy!

I like it because the idea is to exercise based on your body shape (focus on areas that tend to gain weight, or areas that could use toning).  They explain all the body types neutrally, without insinuating that one body type is the best type.  I (and every single one of my female relatives, curse you, genetics) am in a body type called ‘pear shaped’.  I feel it in my muscles the next day, and I am going to try to incorporate it into my overall schedule.  Check it out HERE if you’re interested.  That link is also where I got all of the pictures below.

I’ve even translated the pear-shape exercises into dog-owner-ese for you.  I’m generous like that.

Exercise 1 – Lift-off lunge.

Hold intriguing objects up.  Lower into position where objects are just out of reach of standing dog.  Push off of front leg, balance on one foot while jerking intriguing objects up very high.  Attempt to maintain balance when dog punches you in the gut while leaping enthusiastically into the air, trying to catch the intriguing objects.

Exercise 2 – Scissor Jump

Crouch down in play-like position.  Jump up, flailing wildly with arms and legs, switching legs in mid-air.  Attempt to repeat jump while Dog prances and leaps enthusiastically.  Manage two more wobbly jumps before Dog decides to see if he can get a treat from performing “bow” with his thick-clawed paws on your front bent knee.  Put him in a sit-stay, get one jump in before he tries to hump you from behind.  Wonder where the hell this humpiness is coming from.

Exercise 3 – Pushup and Leg Raise on the ball

Bring out giant ball.  Feel grateful that dog doesn’t appear interested in it.  Do pushup on ball.  Attempt to lift one leg off the ball, causing full-body tremors.  Die.  Repeat exercise one-handed, as you ward off doggy kisses and attempts to jump onto your back.

Exercise 4 – Hundred on the ball

Hold a crunch position with your legs up and resting on the ball, while breathing loudly and counting to 100 – out-two-three-four-five, in-two-three-four-ten, etc.  While Dog alternates between attempting to sit on your arm or stomach for pets, and curling up in the space under your head and shoulders.  That second one actually makes the exercise much easier.

Exercise 5 – mermaid

Lie on your side, supporting arm resting on the most fascinating blanket on earth.  Swing arm above head intriguingly.  Fight off doggy kisses, attempts at blanket thievery, and attempts to curl up on the small piece of blanket directly by your head in order to get the ‘air pets’ you’ve been doing.  Get knocked over by enthusiastic bum-wag when someone comes into the room.

Exercise 6 – Boat curl and press

Done on the floor, challenge of exercise is increased by dog attempting to latch on to one of the fascinating objects you’re waving around at low and high dog-level.  Consider it ‘adding resistance’.

.

.

Exercise 7 – Triangle Lat Raises

Perform first few iterations, causing great excitement in dog.  When he runs over to stand directly beside you, attempt to fight through the distraction (just one more exercise after this!) by deviating from direct up-and-down route of arm, wagging and dodging doggy attempts to rob you of weights.  I strongly recommend against this particular doggy modification – I think I screwed up one of my shoulders doing this.  Nothing too serious, but best avoided all around.

Exercise 8 – Dip and Knee Raise

Integrate dog training into exercise, because the only way you’re going to get through this without having your legs humped by the sexual deviant your dog has become is by convincing him it’s worth his while to sit-stay.  Suspect that sweating all over a fistful of dehydrated beef liver is both rehydrating it and causing your pores to suck up the unappetizing smell of beef liver.  Second suspicion confirmed later, give the relatively healthy bowl of air-popped popcorn to someone whose hands don’t smell of beef liver treat.

I figure this series of at-home exercises will both increase my overall strength and drastically improve Gwynn’s training at the stay command.

15 Comments
by lexy3587 on March 6, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Dog Stuff, My Training and exercise
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by lexy3587 on March 6, 2012

http://goneforawalk.wordpress.com/2012/03/06/exercise-and-training/

Have you got the Time?

I forgot my phone at work.  I also forgot my watch, from when I took it off for a gym class.  I take my watch off for classes because A, I don’t want it to get sweaty and gross, and B, there’s a clock in the classroom, and I can read its reflection in the mirror while flailing along in some semblance of what the instructor is doing.

I check the time a lot.  Sometimes, I check the time immediately after having just checked the time, to confirm that the time I thought I read was, in fact, the time that it actually is.  I only just switched from a waterproof sports-proof indestructible watch (one that allowed me to leave it on through showers, swimming, hiking, and whatever else) to one that actually looks good.  It ticks.  It ticks so softly that I only ever notice it when I am lying in bed at night, my left arm tucked just so, up near my ear.  It’s a strangely soothing sound.

My dad got it years ago.  One of his coworkers used to go to New York on a regular basis, and this guy got it into his head that my dad wanted a knock-off watch.  My dad never wears a watch.  Instead, he asks someone who has a watch something like this: “It’s about 10 to 8, right?”

The person who has a watch glances at their watch, looks suspiciously at my dad, and replies, “Yes.”

Because he’s always right.  And he never wears a watch.

He has no idea where his coworker got the idea that he was desirous of a watch.  He just thanked him politely and stuck the Swiss Fake in a drawer until a few months ago when I was bemoaning the fact that I wanted an analog watch, but hadn’t found one I liked enough to buy yet.  Change the battery, set the time and date, and bam.  I sleep to the soothing tick-tick-tick of a watch whose face glows in the dark, just in case I wake up enough to want to know what time it is, but not enough to put my glasses on and read the time on the alarm-clock-radio I’ve had since I was 10.

What’s this all about?  Well, it sets the scene for last night, when I realized, after pulling Gwynn out of the car and while heading towards Sadie’s house, that I didn’t have the time.  I looked around, as though expecting to suddenly find myself in the kind of small town with a clock tower that you can see from practically anywhere in town.  The kind of clock tower that bongs on the hour and half-hour, so that even though I might not know the time, I would know roughly where, in time, I was.

I went on a walk anyways.  We walked to the middle entrance of the creek valley, and headed north, to the furthest entrance.  The dogs raced around the field like it was the most exciting place.  I threw the ball a few times for them and lost myself in the complete happiness of two dogs running.  We headed back to the middle entrance, and I pulled back my coat to look at my wrist.  Oh.  Right.

Well, the sky isn’t all that dark yet, and it is still winter, so that probably means… something.  Too bad I have about as much of an internal clock as I do an internal compass.

It was light enough that I could go down to the south entrance through the woods without finding myself in absolute darkness.  It was a beautiful evening – the creek valley is protected from the wind, no one was about, and the dogs were staying out of the stinky creek, but still having a great time sniffling and snuffling through the underbrush.

By the time I reached the south entrance, the moon was high and bright in the sky, a narrow crescent not quite at the first quarter, so sharply defined that you could see the shadows and texture of the moonscape.  I seriously considered heading back through the park to the middle entrance, just to keep the walk going a bit longer.  The waspish hum of three cyclists as they dart past me, ninja-like in the darkness dissuaded me.  The path ended near the highway, so chances were good that I would see (or not see) them again on their way back down.  Someone needs to give them the memo about having a light and having a bell, and how it’s the law, but I’d rather not have it emphasized by a bike-dog collision.

It was getting a bit colder, anyways, though, so I headed home.

The whole walk took a bit longer than two hours.  If I’d known the time, chances are I’d have gone back up the way I came in.

There might just be something to the whole ‘living in the moment’ thing.

16 Comments
by lexy3587 on February 28, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Dog Stuff
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by lexy3587 on February 28, 2012

http://goneforawalk.wordpress.com/2012/02/28/have-you-got-the-time/

When the Kids are Away…

We haven’t been all that successful at the K9-Kamp Challenges.  This week, though, we rocked it.  We took the suggestion on Koly or Kaly’s blog (I don’t remember which of you brought it up, but great idea!), and took to the playground for our activities.

It helped that it was cold and rainy for most of the week and weekend.  We never once found the play set previously occupied by children.  We (I) also had a good reason to keep moving – it was the only way to fight off the cold in the air!

The play set was in the field of an elementary school near my house, almost completely enclosed by fences and the school building itself.  The spot is ideal for any kind of off-leash play, apart from having to keep an eye out for snack-items discarded by the school kids.  Also, never-fear – I am a firm believer in poop-and-scoop, so there aren’t any messes for the kids left by us.  The outdoor cats in the area, however, seem to regard the long-jump sandpit as a
super-sized kitty litter.

This is the routine we got into:

Fetch – I throw the ball, Gwynn chases it, and as soon as he gets it, I call him and run in the opposite direction, cheering him on like a crazy-person.  Not only giving me a bit of a run, but also reducing the likelihood of Gwynn deciding to just lie down where the ball landed and have a good chew.  Usually three to five throws before it’s pretty obvious he’s bored of this game.  Seriously, shouldn’t his poodle-side have given him some retriever urges?  Instead of just the urge to splash in any ‘body’ of water, from puddle to bowl to lake to pond to swamp?

Run over to the play set.

Frolic in play set – there are lots of little platforms at different levels on this play set.  I do some step up (one foot, two feet), step down (one foot, two feet), at each level, all the while encouraging Gwynn to jump up when I step up, and jump down when I step down.  We run up and down the staircase a few times, and I get him to jump through the perfectly dog-jump-height and size metal hoop a few times before we jog back away from the play set (and the trees which interfere with my already not-so-great throws), and start off at Fetch again.

We repeat that series a few times, then take a break to do a bit of obedience.  Gwynn and I are working on an intro to dog sports class right now, so I’ve really been trying to get his Heel command down – with the addition of trying to make it work on both the left and right side, not just standard left-heel position.  We learned it in the previous class, but never really… learned it.  He’ll stay at left heel if I lure with a treat, but that’s not really useful.

The Kamp challenge got Gwynn completely pumped up.  He was really focusing on me, at least in part (I think) because I’d been doing so many random and unpredictable things with him earlier.  What this means is that he was really focused, and really getting what I was trying to train for heel.

I looped his leash around my waist, and walked around the baseball diamond with him.  Any time he left my side, I pulled him back in, and rewarded the correct position.  I also randomly rewarded him every few steps for being in the right position.  We did that once at a walk and once at a light jog (much harder to treat, but he was even more focused on me at that point, anyways, so I just cheered him on), and then repeated, but with him on the other side.

The reason I’m sure he’s getting the whole heel idea is that, when I did this series yesterday, he continually tried to  loop around to my left side.  Not the greatest thing for when I was trying to get him to stay on my right-side, but I think it means that he’s figured out what I’m looking for in this – the position right next to me and focused on me – which should make teaching right-side come much easier in the long-run.  I couldn’t stop giggling, as I treated for being on the right side, he accepted the treat, and then ducked around to the left, and looked up at me, as if to say, “See!  Look where I am!  Treat?”

Of course, at dog class, when it came time to do anything in a heel-like position, he looked at me not at all, tried to clear the entire floor of possible crumbs of treats and tried to visit all his new doggy friends, anything but follow at that perfect position.  Which he then did perfectly for the instructor, even more perfectly than he did for me out in the field where no-one was watching.  *Sigh*  at least he’s improving a bit!

7 Comments
by lexy3587 on October 5, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Dog Stuff
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by lexy3587 on October 5, 2011

http://goneforawalk.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/when-the-kids-are-away/

Serenity in a Sauna

Last week, my dad and I had some father-daughter bonding-time.  I bet your first thought for father-daughter bonding is something like fishing or playing hockey… possibly something involving beer.  Well, I like fish, but fishing seems dull.  Doodle fulfils the ‘sports-son’ role to my dad – I have zero interest in any sports.  And I don’t like beer.

Instead we went to a hot yoga class.  The first one, in a groupon-deal of 20 classes!  My mom intends to come as well, but as of this moment, she’s 100% incapacitated by a mysterious neck-ailment.  Until she can shake her head ‘no’ and nod ‘yes’ without whimpering, and until she can sneeze without crying on the floor in the foetal position, no downward dog for her.

A fellow first timer tried to find out the temperature in the room – the teacher would only reply, “It doesn’t matter,  don’t worry about it.”  That’s not ominous at all…

kind of like this... though he claims his beer belly acts as a fulcrum to help him.

There was a huge age and fitness range in the class.  And there were men!  I know this seems like a silly thing to point out about a class, but there are far fewer men in yoga than women.  My dad’s been doing yoga for nearly 15
years.  You should see his Locust Pose.  Even now, in non-hot-yoga classes, he’s very likely to be the only guy, which almost ensures that whatever woman ends up in front of him or behind him feel very self conscious.  So, it was really great that he wasn’t the only guy in the class, and that he wasn’t the only guy over 40 there.

Let me just say, I failed entirely at the pre-class-prep necessary for hot yoga.  The instructions were simple:  drink LOTS of water the day of, and don’t eat in the three hours before class.  Well, don’t-eat, I could follow, but in the afternoon, in my prime serious-hydration timeslot, I was out on a construction site.  It isn’t the ideal place to super-hydrate yourself.  I got home less than half an hour before we had to leave for the class, and drank as much (ie, not enough) water as I could without over-doing it.

The class was excellent and exhausting.

None of the yoga moves were particularly difficult, in and of themselves, but there is such a HUGE difference between doing them at a standard room-temperature and doing them in a sauna-like environment. There was a huge focus on breathing and the poses were split up into multiple shorter durations.

I had to sit out a few standing poses.  I recognised those little black/purple specks in my visionfor what they are, and didn’t really want my first class at this studio to be the one that traumatizes the teachers.

My dad sat out a few poses nearer the end, and modified some of the poses to suit his injured knee.  The way he explains it:  Every morning, I wake up and think, ‘yup, I was in a serious motorcycle accident in my 20’s’.  However, he commented that he was able to do a lot more poses in the hot yoga class than he’d been able to do in his regular-temperature class this fall.

By the end of the class, I was slippery as a greased pig, beet red, and my entire gym outfit was completely soaked through.  It was soaked in the same way it would have been if I had stood fully dressed in the shower for 10 minutes.

Hopefully we’ll do better adjusting to the heat when we go again on Tuesday.  Even after just one class, I recommend trying it out.  Just… drink lots of water throughout the day ahead of time.  And if you aren’t planning on showering at the studio, bring a towel to cover your car seats on the ride home!

9 Comments
by lexy3587 on October 3, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in My Training and exercise
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by lexy3587 on October 3, 2011

http://goneforawalk.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/serenity-in-a-sauna/

I am a Frog… Do I Inspire You?

An update was asked for in the comments from this post here, and will, of course, be provided…

This morning I woke up feeling… tired.  SO tired.  SO tired that I stumbled across my room, turned off my alarm, and reset it for 6 minutes later, and ACUTALLY fell asleep in that time.  Like, dead-asleep.  Asleep enough that I was shocked out of my slumber by the noise of the alarm, and kind of confused about where I was, and why I had set my alarm for 5:03 am.  Satan’s hour.

Sore?  Actually, not really.  My legs and hiney felt only the slightest bit like I’d been doing exercise in the recent past – a feeling that could equally as easily been described as “I was hiking for an hour or two yesterday”, instead of “I tortured my body two days ago in the morning, and then went on a bike ride in the evening, I am a moron”

… just now, I caught myself staring deep into the screen of my computer, entirely absorbed by the desktop image (I have two screens…this document is open on the other screen) of my dog in his muddy, long haired glory.  I’m not sure how much time had passed since I last typed, but I think it might have been in the five-minute range.  The tiredness hasn’t gone away yet. I think I’ll be tucked away in bed tonight by 9 at the latest.

Since yesterday’s post/update: I didn’t do anything specifically for physical activity yesterday.  I went for a two-ish hour walk with Gwynn and Sadie.  Kind of a big deal, since it’s officially the first walk I’ve done solo in a really long time.  Doodle is up at her new job, working at a Provincial Park on their maintenance crew – my walk buddy has vacated the city for the summer.  And she’ll be back for less than a week at the end of the summer before heading off to Ottawa for University.  Proud/jealous/happy for
her/sad for me/overall sappy and sentimental… my emotional turmoil about this whole Doodle-growing-up is more like a pogo-stick I can’t get off than like a roller-coaster.

Sadie and Gwynn were shockingly well-behaved, walked them both like a champ.  We found a good place on the lakeshore to wade, and I joined them, in an attempt to lure them out to actual-swimming.  As a reward for this, I got punched in the bum by Gwynn’s giant soggy paws, narrowly avoiding being pushed face-first into the water I only wanted to go into up to my knees.  To comfort me, Sadie jumped up to get a hug, smacking her soggy paws against my chest.  Classy Gal that I am, it didn’t prevent me from going to the dog-park after we finished wading in the gorgeously clear water, wet bum and boob-paw-prints and all.

Off to obedience class, where Gwynn was relatively well behaved, and I didn’t get home for dinner and prepping for Wednesday until about 9:30 pm.  Make lunch, trim dog’s
nails, clean dog’s ears (yes, stupid to do both in one sitting… but I was already a bit brain-dead from tiredness), pack gym stuff, and barely make it to bed (or so it felt) before my alarm was going off.

We got to Cross-fit in good time, only to discover that the doors were locked.  Apparently, without updating it anywhere, they had changed the opening time from 5:30 to 5:45, just for the summer.  This didn’t improve my already zombie-like mood, standing outside in the chilly air at 5:40 in the morning, while the instructors arrive EXACTLY on (new, unknown) time.

Crossfit Summary:

Front squat/deadlift combination thing (there are no adequate words in my repertoire… this ‘title’ is derived from what a weight-lifting friend replied when I gave her a detailed explanation of what I had done)+ elbow-to-knee + squats –>21, then 18, then 15, then 12, then 9, then 6, then 3… of each.  I die.

My elbow to knee is more like hanging from a pull-up bar and trying to curl into fetal position.  My knees and elbows don’t even do a hover-near-each-other type kiss, not even a nod-in-passing.  I probably looked like a frog hanging from a tree branch in a motivational poster – “Hang in there!”

21 minutes later (well, according to the generous instructor, 20:59) I finished the exercises, palms bright red and bruised from the hanging-fetal-crunch, legs wobbly from the massive number of squats I’d had to do.

How do I feel now:
TIRED.  Like a zombie.  But not with the urge to eat people.  Maybe chocolate-people (does Nestle make those?  I feel like it’d be a good way to vent frustrations, being able to actually ‘bite someone’s head off’… like a delicious voodoo-doll of frustration venting)… or people standing between me and a soft bed in a quiet room (and the purpose of that would more be to maim them and get them out of my way… not the actual eating of them…)

While I predict a return of the oh-so-sexy cowboy-walk, my foggy brain doesn’t give two hoots about a future past sleeping.

Will I ride my bike tonight in hopes of helping fight off the cowboy walk?  Hells NO.  I am le tired.

Next crossfit – Monday… at which point I will show up a minute or two past 5:45, so that I can just go into the building, no delays.  Hopefully that will prevent me from being as grumpy as this morning’s 15 minute delay made me.

A Reminder – Mark from The Idiot Speaketh and Pedaleth is doing a fundraising bike-ride to help the people of Minot tomorrow!  He is asking for people to donate to the
Red Cross chapter that covers this severely flooded region.  Go check out his blog and make sure to stop by to cheer him on tomorrow!

10 Comments
by lexy3587 on June 29, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Dog Stuff, My Training and exercise
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by lexy3587 on June 29, 2011

http://goneforawalk.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/i-am-a-frog-do-i-inspire-you/

Walk Like A Cowboy

There has been a speed-bump in the training process… but never fear – just because I’m not talking about it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.  It just hurt too much for me to mention for most of last week, and it hasn’t started hurting too much this week… yet.

I completed my THIRD Crossfit class this morning.  Yup… morning.  6am to 7am.  Which means, I woke up at 5am… otherwise known as Satan’s hour.  Having packed my breakfast, lunch, work clothes, towel, sweat-towel, water bottle, and running shoes the night before, I stumbled out of bed at 5 am.  I stumbled, bleary-eyed, to the washroom, brushed my teeth with my eyes closed and leaning against the bathroom counter, considered brushing my hair, and instead pulled the mass up into a ponytail without brushing it, and then snuck quietly downstairs.  All of my things piled at the side-door (at the bottom of the staircase), I stealthily opened that door, piled my arms with my things, and dashed off into the pre-dawn darkness.  5:12 am.  Why?  Because the dog would freak out if he realized that I was up, and not letting him out of his crate to take
him for a walk.  I’ve enlisted Peanut to walk him on Crossfit mornings… that means, there have already been two mornings of unhappy, sleepy Peanut walking baffled-dog at 7am, and there will be 9 more (the first crossfit was in the evening, the second was last Wednesday morning, the third was this morning)… she is only dragging her sleepy butt out of bed for the love of her sister and the furriest member of our family.  Also for the love of cold, hard cash.  Of course.

5:15 am, I was picking A up from her apartment, and we were off… gym-bound and already weary.  This morning, the instructor summarized my weights at the end of it.  I stared at her blankly, unsure why she was telling me this, and she said, “You’ve been keeping track… right?”

Um… sure.  Yes.  Yes I have. In my head.  I bet it’s somewhere in there.

So, with the new information in tow, I’ve figured out approximately what I’ve done, and it is summarized here:

June 16

Introduction to equipment and activities of the day

Four rounds of:

  • 15 Box Jumps
  • 15 Push-ups
  • 15 Pull-ups (first 2.5 rounds with one green band, remaining
    with one green  band and a black band)

Time: 16.5 minutes, ish

The days after: My arms were like noodles.  I could actually physically NOT pull the van trunk closed that weekend.  The dog hurt me every time he tried to drag on the leash.

June 22

Intro to dead-lifts – I got switched to a slightly lower weight of bar than A, and, with that 22.5 lb (junior) bar, and the weights on it, I dead-lifted 52.5 lb.  (to contrast, A lifted at least 70 lb total).  We did five sets of three reps.

Then, timed, we did:

Kettle Bell Swings:Pushups:Squats

21:21:42 + 15:15:30 + 9:9:18

Time: 12:34 ish

The Days After: I spent the following two days walking like a cowboy.  My legs hurt so much, I was bending to reach things on the ground like a decrepit 150 year old with joint problems, and lowering my bum down to the toilet seat was … a process…  This distracted me from my arms, however, which weren’t all that bothered except when I lifted them past shoulder height.

June 27, 2011

5×5 Squats with a bar loaded with weight on our shoulders.  I did about 47.5 lb (including the bar), and A made it up to about 82.5 lb.

Then, we had to do as many sets in 7 minutes of:

10 push-press (just the bar… 22.5 lb.  You start it at your chest, and lift it up until your arms are straight over your head, then return it to your chest)

75 skips

Reps:  I made it three full cycles, and 5 push-presses, while A made it over 4 full.

The Days After: Well… I feel fine now.  But we’ll see.  Also, I really need to practice my skipping, because right now, I do two jumps for every loop of the rope… one big jump, and a second ‘slow my landing’ type baby-hop right after it.  It’s like JUMP-ump.

The Plan:  Mondays and Wednesdays they offer a Groupon class at 6am… we will be there those days until we finish the last of the 12 classes.  If you don’t hear from me again soon, know that I died, or that my arms fell off.  I am not likely to be proficient at
toe-typing.  I think my big toe would interfere a lot in the process, as it is very large, and the rest of my toes, while move-able, aren’t all that strong.

Also part of the plan – get proficient/strong enough to keep up with A in the realm of weight-lifting.  I don’t really foresee this as being possible… but one can dream!  And until then, hopefully the teacher will stop apologizing when she says I shouldn’t add any more weight to my bar while A is adding more to hers.  Really… I’m ok with it!  If I tried to keep up with A, I would be squashed like a bug.  And, hopefully, we’ll do more pull-ups… because I can definitely do that more proficiently than things with weighted bars.

11 Comments
by lexy3587 on June 27, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in My Training and exercise
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by lexy3587 on June 27, 2011

http://goneforawalk.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/walk-like-a-cowboy/

Training: A New Challenge, and Anxiety All ‘Round

I’ve decided to stop putting these training updates at the bottom of other posts, because they increase my wordcount from ‘hey, stop by and skim through this sometime, it could be entertaining’ to ‘take an hour out of your day and read this intimidatingly long essay that may or may not be entertaining, but certainly doesn’t seem like something you can just skim’.  Not that my non-training-update-filled posts don’t tend to get a bit over-long, but this way, I’ll at least stay on topic…ish.

So… since the weekend, my exercise towards being capable of doing my fundraising Ride for MS has been:

Saturday – not much, except walking… we went to Woofstock (see this post by my sister that covers it a little bit), which means most of the walking was at the slow-shuffle pace of all large crowded places.

Sunday – re-introduced Gwynn to rollerblades. We actually made it around the block!  Slowly, and with many sudden stops for him to sit huddled miserably, tail tucked.  I felt like a monster.  However, we figured out a good system.  Doodle would stay with huddled-Gwynn while I rollerbladed the next stretch of road.
She would then follow, and he’d keep up excellently.  It was kind of like we were proving to him that I wasn’t about to suddenly fall at any moment, and that I can, in fact, rollerblade.  He went with me a few times as well, though he is definitely still quite sure that my doom-by-rollerblade is imminent.  Clearly, however, my wearing of knee pads (that’s the difference from last time) was enough to prevent me from falling.  All in all, a success.  After dropping him off
after our slow-crawl of a roller-blade around the block, Doodle and I rollerbladed 10 km (!) through the waterfront trail.  Great success!  Next time, will bring water, because our only access to water was at the turning-point of our trip, where we elegantly and with panache slurped water out of the automatic taps in the public washroom.

Monday – walk… though more like hobble, because rollerblading works muscles in my bum-region that rarely see the light of activity.

Tuesday – long walk with Gwynn and Sadie, then off to dog obedience class, where we were less dunce-like, apart from Gwynn’s random spaz moments.

Wednesday – three hours of walk, then a 20 km bike ride.

Thursday – Tonight is my first attempt at Cross-fit.  Another groupon-adventure, this time it is 12 classes over the course of 3 months.  And since purchasing, I have become increasingly concerned about how I’m going to survive it!  This is INTENSE.  Their classes seem crazy-hardcore and kind of terrifying.  A and I spent Thursday emailing back and forth with increasing anxiety about this class.  The best part?  Apparently we’re the ONLY people registered for the class.  GULP.  An hour in which a hardcore instructor of cross-fit will kick our sorry un-coordinated asses up and down the room doing purposely random exercises that include weights and possibly even attempting to lift oneself up by the arms.  My arms are as strong as over-cooked spaghetti noodles.  I do a lot of things involving my legs… my arms?  Not so much.  My push-ups are a sad, sad affair,
and generally result in trembling arms barely out of ‘dead straight and elbows locked’ position as I do half as many half-assed pushups as the rest of the class does full-push-ups.  And this is even with the sissy knee-on-the-floor pushups!

Friday, there will be an update on crossfit… if I can lift my arms enough to operate a keyboard!  I’ll have more of an idea of just what it is (apart from scary), and how well (poorly) I did in it

10 Comments
by lexy3587 on June 16, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in My Training and exercise
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by lexy3587 on June 16, 2011

http://goneforawalk.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/training-a-new-challenge-and-anxiety-all-round/

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 103 other followers