Day 91: Gym Daze

I was able to get to the gym today, and I did note a few things that bear describing. One, a woman dressed in total street clothes, including a floral print blouse and black jeans and sunglasses walking for an hour on the treadmill. Two, people reading magazines on their recumbent bikes. Three, an old man with a big belly, walking VERY slowly into the gym with what looked like a second-generation sony Walkman (circa 1980). I noted a few things that I am still having difficulty with at the gym:

1. Making sure the iPod earphones are not in a birds-nest tangle. I spent the first three minutes of my workout just trying to get enough length so I wasn't hunching over the machine. A few times I really had to concentrate so I didn't fall down and interrupt the machine's timekeeping.

2. Bringing/keeping the right things to the gym. I got the keys, water, iPod, gum, wallet, gym pass, sweatshirt, towel, there's a lot going on. You're supposed to put stuff on the shelf as you come in. But I'm from NY— I can't do that. I throw it behind the exercise machine. This is frowned on. Also, bringing the right TYPE of towel is key. You can't just bring a beach towel, no, it has to be just the right size.

3. Replacing the towel. About halfway through (and sooner, some days) I need to wipe my face and head. This requires picking up the towel, wiping, then replacing it. I have about a 40% success rate. Often, I am JUST BARELY getting it so it stays. Today it dropped twice. Each time the machine said "workout suspended." I glared at it, disbelievingly, to no effect whatsoever.

Today for the first time I did the stairstepper-thing (you can see it at http://us.commercial.lifefitness.com/content.cfm/91x). I see people on it all the time, but today was the first time I had the guts to get out of the cheap seats and try something different. I'll tell you I was sweating like crazy within a few minutes. People on either side of me had the red EKG readouts looking like Mt. Washington, mine was a flat-line. So sad. But I did 32:00 minutes (the posted limit is 30 minutes, another reason I am bound to be exiled) then walked six times around the track (that's a quarter mile). I had done 2.25 miles on the cardio thing, so overall I thought I did quite well. I am almost starting to think that I COULD, as someone once noted, exercise enough to make eating pizza guilt-free a reality.

Breakfast
Two Eggs Over
2 Strips Turkey Bacon (J.O. natch)
Tea

Snack
1/2 Cup Unsalted Mixed Nuts
2 Cheese Sticks
Ass't Fruit (a few grapes, a few raspberries, 1 strawberry)
1 Granny Smith Apple

Lunch
Greek Salad with Tuna, Feta, Vidalia Onions

Dinner
Shrimp Cocktail,
Romaine Lettuce
3 Small Bites (made for Ruby) cheeseburger

So it was a weird eating day. Emily wanted me to get Mag at 9:30 which is earlier than usual—I was just sitting down to my eggs. I got the baby and then decided to take all the kids to Allendale farm to buy some berries (and a cookie the size of Ruby's head). When I returned, I twice tried to make oatmeal and failed (this is akin to my flipping-the-egg problem, but I will write more about that later). Then, Mag needed a nap, so I eschewed a third attempt and ran over to the gym, shoving a few nuts, a cheesestick and some fruit in my mouth on the way over. When I got back I had a salad, and we saw a friend of Emily's in the afternoon. On the way back we stopped at the market and I wanted to get catfish but they only had a little, so I thought I'd add some shrimp to fill. But on our return home there was chaos-lite so I just whipped out the shrimp cocktail and emily and I ate what we could. And that turned out to be dinner. So it was a weird eating day. But it was a great gym day. We also got the "jogging stroller" —so that might open up a whole new world for me and Magnolia. I must remember to join the tennis league for over 40s, too...