Friday, March 25, 2011

"...and I had a reason to be optimistic because I'm moving forward ..."

Good evening,

Today I did a couple of things that I've been meaning to do for some time. When I feel a strong desire to do something, often I am stuck with that desire and it lingers in my mind until I make a decision about it. Either that means that I do it (and the desire, and that phenomenon of being gripped by the thought goes away), or I ignore it or don't do it, in both cases, that feeling of being 'gripped' by the desire does not go away. That's how I feel when I want to purge, or when I want to binge, it sticks, until I act on it.

So today, I did two things I've said I wanted to do but didn't schedule: I got a hair guy and I then looked for a jacket at uniqlo. I saw a few nice jackets at uniqlo but the sizes were way too small (when XL is too small for you, there is a problem), I blame it on their 'japanese' sizings. I bought a new t-shirt and a hoody from uniqlo. The t-shirt is a 'cooling' shirt, the opposite of the 'heating' shirt that I currently wear, there's almost no difference between them except maybe the price. The 'heat-tech' thermal shirts are very cheap although the new 'cooling' shirt is just a bit more. I bet there is no difference between the two, but I do find it interesting that I now have a shirt that is explicitly designed for the weather. It does look exactly the same. While I am not the hoody wearing type of person, I do like having something light to wear in these warm months, and something light for when I'm walking to the gym.

I thought that since I was outside today I would venture off to the Gym. The trainer said to me that I should aim for 3 sessions a week, and a fourth would be a bonus. So, today was my bonus. I thought that anything I do today would be basically a bonus and not part of the core of my training, that said it was far from relaxed. I started off with the treadmill and aiming for 50kcal, it was surprisingly easy considering that most of the days over the past 3 weeks I've found the 50kcal target overwhelming. I went up to 57kcal and went on to some upper arm work, then some abs and leg work. After my abs were killing me I felt that I was running out of steam. I realised at that point that it would be a shorter session than usual. However, I decided to do one more excercise.

At the gym there is this 'competition' board for certain reaching certain targets on the tradmill, cycle machine and rowing machine. Basically its a triathlon excercise with three different tiers/leagues. As I looked at it I saw how easy the rowing machine excercise was, the Triathlon targets don't ask for very much in terms of rowing distances, for jogging and the cycle machine however, they ask for a pretty serious distance. I thought that I would venture to complete the entire length for the 'running' targets, they said that the crosstrainers would count towards the triathlon challenge I worked the equivalent distance , so I worked on this lower body machine (not exactly a cross trainer) and got myself to 5km. I have to admit it was pretty damned hard. For 'one more excercise' it basically took 2/3rds of my workout. The initial warmup/resistance work was 30 or so minutes, and then the triathlon challenge took about 50 minutes. On the plus side I did get to catch up on my podcasts about Plato. I think that the next time I do a cardio endurance workout I am going to bring an audiobook with me. I'll get through some chapters quickly while I push the calories out of my pores.

In the process of doing 5km, I realised that I was quite tired and I couldn't be bothered to finish off at the sauna, so I just made my way home. I am quite glad that my cardiovascular fitness is improving, I'm patient with the work on my upper body and resistance training. I am in agony when I work on my abs, but there was a point when I realised that the pain was worthwhile. I was listening to an anime theme tune that I've not listened to since 2004 and I had this feeling of hope and optimism, similar to when I was 18, the association with 2004 gave me a feeling of great optimism. I remembered how it felt, and I had a reason to be optimistic because I'm moving forward with my excercise.

So now I' home I'm a little bit tired. If I just stay awake for a few more hours, I can properly sleep until tomorrow.

No comments: