Buff

I have neve in my life done a “real” push up. And by that I mean, the boys’ way of doing a push up. I’ve done the girl kind with my knees on the ground but never even attempted the boy kind.

Until today, when Trainer Dave made me do it. Only he made me do it with my hands on a bar that was balanced on a Bosu ball (which is basically like a stability ball only cut in half with a flat plastic back- you can balance on either side depending on what you are trying to accomplish). Not only did I do it, but I did two sets of 15.

I have to say, I’m pretty impressed with myself. Maybe I’ll be doing those one armed push ups before too long.

I Can Barely Walk

Monday Trainer Dave had me do calf raises. No big deal, I thought. I have done calf raises before and often do them when I stand in line because it’s a great and easy way to tone calves and hamstrings and glutes. So I figured this was going to be a piece of cake. Except not so much.

This machine was weird to begin with, since it was a seated one, but that only made me think it was going to be that much easier. But holy hell, it about killed me. Which is saying something considering he had previously made me do bicep curls while balancing on a half ball.

I may be overstating it just a little bit but there was a moment or two when I thought I might, um, how shall we say it politely? I can’t say it politely so I’ll just say it. I thought I might actually poop my pants. Thankfully I did not, or trust me you would have heard about it sooner. That’s blog fodder too good to pass up. But seriously, if that had happened, there would be no coming back to the gym after that.

So even though I managed to not humiliate myself at the gym, I am left with one lingering issue. My calves are so sore, I can barely walk. Ouch. I haven’t been this sore from training since I started this whole process.

Let’s just hope that tomorrow’s session does not hold calf raises for me. Not only for the sake of my calves but for the sake of my pride.

Four

I had another assessment with Trainer Dave yesterday at the gym, as it’s been about a month since we started working out together. I knew it was going to happen and I was pretty nervous. I don’t know why really. I guess I just wanted to know that I am on track.

We didn’t do the full body age test like I did at the beginning, just my weight and body fat calculation. I have dropped 4% of my body fat. I stood there looking at them blankly because I was really looking to get some sort of feedback on that. Is that great? Is it good? Is it not good enough? Is it bad? A little feedback here, please! They tell me that it’s really good but I wonder how good it really is. Would they actually tell me that it wasn’t very promising? That would hardly be a motivatation thing to hear. But then again they didn’t tell me that I should spend more time doing cardio, or really think about writing down all my calories. So I don’t know.

Oh, I also lost four pounds. I expressed my concern over the fact that it was only four pounds and I got the standard response - muscle weighs more than fat. Yadda yadda yadda. Yes, I know. But I’ve been working my ass off, literally, I’d like to see more than four pounds gone. I need to be more patient. I know. Blah blah blah.

Notes from the Gym

I may have mentioned that Trainer Dave is buff. Apparently he used to be an undercover narcotics cop in Miami until his fiancee made him quit. I don’t blame her. If you want to stay married, that’s not a job you should let your husband have. Anyway, he’s buff. But luckily, I don’t find buff guys that attractive. I mean, I can admire the six pack on LL Cool J. If you don’t know what I’m talking about please check out this clip and you might want to pause at about 37 seconds.

You’re welcome.

Anyway, there is a difference between fit and buff. Trainer Dave is BUFF. So we have no issues. I think of him kind of like a doctor. He is always very respectful and used to ask before he touched me in any way every time. Now he knows I trust him not to grab my ass. I mean, really. If he wanted to grab asses, he could find hotter ones than mine to grab. I’m not worried about it. He only touches me to correct a motion I’m doing, or to help me balance, or to tell me when I’ve gone too far back on a crunch or something. It’s clinical, it’s not sexual at all. So tell me why it is that I get all flummoxed on some exercises we do when he stands in front of me and I’m positioned so that I am looking right at his crotch? I don’t WANT to look there. I don’t find it titillating in anyway. But it’s RIGHT THERE. So I put my head down or close my eyes and pretend I’m just focusing on the exercise and isolating that muscle.

Somewhat related to this is a girl I hatefully call Jiggly Girl. Now, no snark from you all. I too am a Jiggly Girl, which is why I work out with the trainer so I can cast off the jiggle. But I, and here’s where it gets tricky, COVER MY JIGGLE IN PUBLIC. I know I jiggle. So I do not go to the gym in my tiny shorts and athletic bra. If you can rock that look, like my friend Karin does, then by all means, rock on. (Although Karin does not do the bra - she wears a tank top but I know she could pull off the bra if she wanted to.) And you don’t have to have a perfect body but this girl is so far past the line of being able to rock the tiny shorts/athletic bra look that I’m honestly surprised that her friends have not staged a Gym Attire Intervention. Maybe get Dr. Drew to host it.

Now Jiggly Girl? Apparently has a thing for Trainer Dave. I don’t think he knows her, because when she walks in front of us about a jillion times in the hour I work out with him, he gives no look of recognition, not even the uber-masculine chin raise. So as I’m trying to do my military presses while seated on a stability ball with one leg in the air, I get distracted by Jiggly Girl on her many laps by us. We don’t stay in one spot and she’s everywhere we are, but just walking by, not using equipment in the same area. That’s part of the reason I suspect she’s vying for some personal training of a different sort. But Trainer Dave, bless his heart, is not biting. He wears a ring on his ring finger even though he’s not getting married until October. Sort of a cougar repellent, I think. But doesn’t he know that cougars don’t care about wedding rings?

Oh and one last note from the gym. I admire so much the Muslim women who come to work out regularly. They cover from head to toe in a warm up suit and they wear their head covering but they are there and running to no where on the stair climbers or the elliptical machines. It’s just not something you see every day, at least not here in Garland, Texas. And I admire it because honestly, if I had to wear what they wear on a daily basis, I would not give a shit whether I had tummy flab or if my arms jiggled.

Slow News Day

There’s just not a lot to report today.

Bridget started back at Mother’s Day Out today. We have her going Monday, Wednesday and Friday for three weeks in June and three weeks in July. The day is shorter though. She moved up to the bigger kids’ room today. No naps, no cribs, no high chairs. Sniffle sniffle. No more baby. She’s a big girl now. She did great and I think this will help us get to one nap a day for good. We’ve been dabbling in that for a while but it’s really time for it to be official.

Tomorrow we start swim lessons. We’ll see how I manage to get both of us into swim suits and then changed back in a semi-public place where she can run wild.

I had my best personal training session yet today. I never thought I could do push ups. So when Trainer Dave hooked me up with a floor mat and a step (like the ones used in step aerobics) I was naturally trepidatious. I had to put one hand on the step and one hand on the floor and then do the push up between my two hands, then switch which hand was on the floor and which was on the step. I thought it would kill me, but it was not bad at all. So the next set, he raised the step. That was a bit tougher but I still was able to do both sets without collapsing, which I thought I would. Then in an effort to kill me and my quads, which are STILL sore from last week’s workouts, he made me lunge-walk down a hallway and back carrying a 10-pound weight in each hand. Fucker. But I triumphed and got a pat on the back from Trainer Dave who told me he was proud of me.

And with that, I’m headed to bed. Nighty-night.

Trouble Has Started

Today in Target, I was looking for sidewalk chalk. I figured it was time to get Bridget some outdoor type toys and we can easily play with some washable sidewalk chalk on the back patio at least in the mornings. So I had Bridget with me as we went up and down the toy aisles trying to find it. We went down the aisle with the baby dolls, and apparently one is activated by motion because when we walked by it, it started crying. Well, that grabbed Bridget’s attention and she started to look closely at the other dolls. Then she really wanted one in particular. In fact, when I tried to walk away, she started crying “Mommy, nooooooo!” Now, I know it probably was the wrong thing to do, but she really loved this doll, it was NOT one of the crying variety, and it was reasonably priced, so I bought it for her. And she carried that thing in its box in her lap the rest of the time at Target. It made her so happy. And it made me happy to make her happy. When we took the doll out of its package and she got to carry it around for real, she was so happy. She carried it like a baby, and gave it hugs and kisses and put it to bed.

I don’t want to start the habit of her crying and expecting me to buy her things.  I’ll need to take a firmer stance about not buying toys every time. But this is really the first time she’s really been interested in something in the store. And I caved. I feel some shame about that. But I also feel like the hero mom too.

In some other news…. I am so sore from Monday’s appointment with Trainer Dave that I cry every time I have to walk down the stairs. I have another appointment with him tomorrow and I don’t know how I’m possibly going to handle that. Ouch.

Also, I got a letter yesterday from my student loan company that THIS IS MY LAST PAYMENT!!!! EVER!!!! Twelve short years after college graduation, my education is mine free and clear. But I think I’m going to continue to make the payment to Bridget’s college savings. I normally pay all my bills online, but this one I am going to write a check so I can write in the memo line “see ya suckers!”

And lastly, we bought a new dreamy TV. It will arrive tomorrow. 46 inches of LCD goodness. Jake is so excited he can barely stand himself. I wonder how Bridget will react to Elmo in HD?

Ass-Kicking Day 1

Today I had my first personal training session. I was a little unsure about the whole thing when I realized that my trainer was going to be a man. I thought I might get a bit more sympathy from a woman trainer. But I figured I’d give it a shot.

We’ll call him Trainer Dave. He’s really nice. He used to be a cop, and I can see that totally. He’s probably my age, but he’s one of those muscle guys that I just don’t find attractive at all. I’m glad about that. If I found him attractive, I’d probably freak out and not go back. But he’s nice and laughed at my stupid jokes.  Plus he pushes me but not in an obnoxious way.

But here’s a weird thing. It’s like Big Brother Fitness in there. I bought a heart monitor on the advice of the first trainer so that I could find my target zones or whatever the hell that means. I wear the band around my chest and I have a monitor that is like a watch on my wrist. But when I was on the treadmill for a few minutes to warm up, I noticed my heart rate was showing on the treadmill. It was picking up the signal from my heart monitor. Very cool and convenient because it would be hard to keep up a pace on the treadmill when I do cardio, if I have to keep my eye on my wrist. But wait, it gets better. Toward the end of the workout, I was doing yet another set of crunches and Trainer Dave said to me “slow down, your heart rate is over 150 and that’s over the fat burning zone.” I asked how he knew that and he said that his heart monitor on his wrist was picking up my heart rate. Very convenient in a 1984 Orwellian sort of way.

I’ll probably be crying come Friday but I’m really happy with my first day.

Motivation Comes at a Premium Around Here

Today I signed over a ridiculous amount of money for three months of personal training and a heart monitor.  Well, I paid for one month and the heart monitor today. I still have two months to pay for. Want to know why? Because my body age is…. I can’t even tell you. It’s too horrible to share. But I don’t feel that old, not really. I also know I am more flexible than the test showed today because the machine was in my way. I could have stretched much farther, but the damn machine…. did I mention it was in my way???

So I hope that the combination of the ridiculous amount of money I spent and good etiquette will force me to keep it up. Because I want my body to be my age. Or younger. Younger would be ok.

I actually think that some of the goals are a bit higher than I even want to achieve. And I’ll tell you that I love to eat. I will definitely be conscious of my calorie intake now that I have a max and a minimum to go by. But I’m not really going to body perfection. I don’t care about six pack abs or any of that. I just want to find pants that fit and to lose the muffin top.

And apparently, I’m willing to pay through the nose for these things.

Back in the Saddle

I ran this morning for the first time since the major suckage (3.2 miles in 38 minutes is nothing to write home about, but in my defense I had just had Lucy put to sleep the day before and my mind was not on the task at hand) that was the 5K race I ran on December 15. Ugh, that was three weeks ago. I suck. But I had a great run today. The weather was nice, I brought my iPod and just retreated into my head and ran. I made no room for the negative self-talk that I often fall prey to but I also paid attention and when my body told me to stop, I stopped and walked a bit.

I was hoping to run another 5K on the 19th with Karin, but I have plans that day and I’m not sure I can get to where I’m going if I commit to a morning at White Rock Lake. I could do one next Saturday but that’s, you know, next Saturday. Like in a week. I’d have to really push myself to make that happen. Maybe I’ll just excuse myself for this month, focus on getting my mind back in the game and find a fun one in February. Or at least one with a cool T-shirt. Because that’s really why I do this.

Couch to 5K: Race Redux

Since the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day was sort of a bust (so crowded we couldn’t really keep up a pace of jogging for more than a few minutes at a time) Karin and I have decided to run a better race, hopefully one that is less crowded, on December 15.  It’s called the Jogger Egg Nogger, and at the end of the race, they serve eggnog, both leaded and unleaded. Even though I don’t like eggnog, I still think it’s fun. This one is actually timed, although I don’t give a fig about my time. I just do it for the exercise and the t-shirt. But there will be less folks out there just for a stroll. In fact, it’s a 5K RUN so there better not be any walkers out there.

This time I’m making Jake and Bridget come so they can wave to me as I cross the finish line. Last time was too crazy, but this should be a better situation all around. I really can’t wait!

I think I need to just find one of these every month or six weeks or so and that way I’ll have to keep up my running to stay ready for them. Plus it’s a great way to increase my t-shirt wardrobe, <sarcasm>which like all new moms, is certainly lacking. </sarcasm>