More gym tales and other tales, too

On my last post, I talked about the pilates class...so on from there. I did return to do pilates several times now and while still difficult, knowing the routine seems to help. I must say that while my arms and legs are strong, my abs suck. Now they've never been my strong point. While in the Army, I would barely do 50 situps in 2 minutes, usually just doing the last one at time. I'm finding now that I can do more, but how impressive is three sets of 8 before having to stop? I mean really...and if we go into obliques, it is so much worse, but I'm keeping on. Maybe one day I can do 32 at a clip! Woo!

I've also returned to the weights class a few times, and no more elbow problems. In fact, I've had less grinding in the one I broke. I also got the idea after missing this class one morning that the Tae-bo class right after it would be fun. I thought pilates was hard...but it was also fun. We began with the warm ups of punching motions and lots of twisting...and a break. Ok so far...then we began adding kicks...and then kicking combos. I swear my brain was understanding what the instructor wanted us to do, but my body just didn't want to listen. He even laughed when I told him that! And then we went into advanced abs work...ha ha ha ha ha! But it was fun and I may try it a few more times before giving up. The only problem is that it is offered on the same night as pilates (right now it's in the mornings, but once school starts, that isn't happening). Maybe I could switch off every week.

I also tried another class. I went to the gym to "run" on the ellipse machine one night and the desk clerk came around asking if any of us wanted to try a class. I figured that it was other than running (for cross training) so I went to join the class. It was a spin/yoga class. So I grabbed my “Greg LeMond” bike (funny, since the Tour was in week 2) and did my first spinning class. I understood the different positions, the tightening of resistance, and so on. What I couldn’t understand was the resting bars on the bike. From what the instructor said, you only hold the ends of the bars and do not lean on them. Why have them, then? I don’t get it…any-hoo did the spin for 30 minutes and then relaxed for a few moments and went into yoga (also new to me) for 30 minutes. Not bad, but guess what night of the week it is on…yes! The same night as pilates and Tae-bo!

As far as running, I’ve been improving. I started with 30 minutes of running and walking. At first it was 3½ minutes running, 1½ walking. Now I’m up to 40-50 minutes (includes warmup/cooldown) and running 8-12 minutes and walking 2 minutes. Pretty soon I’ll be running non-stop again.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT…

We’ve been watching some great things on DVD lately (love the library – no rental fees!). Mike has a series called Farscape. It’s quite fun. A pilot gets sucked through a wormhole and becomes part of a crew on a prison transport. A lot of conflicting personalities/species makes things fun. It also has creatures from the Jim Henson Workshop as characters. I’ve also become addicted to NCIS. Mark Harmon is such a cutie and Abby is hilarious. Again all about conflicting personalities.

I’ve also completes some more books. Finished all the Scott Westerfield Uglies series already, but added Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West the book the play is based on. In short, the unknown history of the Wicked Witch and how she is misunderstood. World War Z is a great book on a zombie war, and I HATE zombies, but the book was intriguing and hard to put down. I reread Turn of the Screw a fantastic little horror story, by Henry James, where you are never sure of what happened.

In non-fiction, I read a book called Heat about New York kitchens and Mario Batali. After becoming enthralled by Wicked I read the Grimmerie about the creation of the play. Also I’m currently reading Isaac’s Storm on the 1900 Galveston hurricane and the weatherman stationed there. I’ve also been reading a lot of cookbooks :)

Books still on my shelf (only a week and a half to finish…uh-oh) Thunderstruck by Erik Larson (Issac’s Storm, Devil in White City), Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbruck, and Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult are the main ones I want to get done, but there are always others.