Silent ridicule

After a week of doing very little I had some ground to make up. Friday night I met up with Nigel at the gym and cracked on with my new regime.

Some stretches. The stomach crunching. 20 minutes on the cross trainer doing interval work at level 10. I was then planning to head across and do the weights, only trouble was the two massive blokes who were lifting heavier and heavier weights.

I psyched myself up to head over to the weights section despite these iron pumpers, we all could see that I wasn’t as well built as them, 5kgs is a start after all… then this older woman headed over as well and started hoisting 5kgs into the air. For shame, I was supposed to be using that weight. That was it, no way on this earth I was going over there, the silent ridicule would have been too much.

So instead I headed across to the treadmill. In my head I was consoling myself that I might not be able to pump as much iron but I was good at running. 20 minutes, interval work, gas mark 7.5mph. 100% knackered.

Nigel is pounding away through his routine as always, maintaining good stroke rate on the rowing machine (four hundred and thirty something) and having learned of my revised and tougher plan, Nigel has also upped his reps to 15 in 3 sets on all of his routine.

That was Friday, and I felt pretty good. Saturday was a day of rest.

Sunday, met Nigel again for a session in the gym. Sunday seems to be pretty quite in the gym (if not the swimming pool) and I got a chance to pump some iron. I picked up the 7.5kg weights (having decided that only girls use the 5kgs) and started to do some curls. 2 sets of 15 with each arm.

Following that was 20 minutes on the cross trainer doing intervals at level 10. This day, for whatever reason I found this really, really hard with my legs protesting (as they always do) and for the first time my chest was really screaming a protest as well. I did the rest of the routine weights wise but there was to be no more cardio work from me this day.

Nigel made me chuckle a little bit. He strolls over from the rowing machine claiming to have pushed the boundaries today by doing 16 minutes on the rowing machine at level 7 instead of the usual 15 minutes at level 6. I laugh, but I know that if I stuck one extra minute on the rowing machine it would probably break me.

Apparently he was knackered but annoyingly looked as fresh as a daisy without a bead of sweat or anything. When I look knackered I am all red and blotchy with sweat running as free as a river.

And that was this weekends training. Sunday night I am sitting there on the sofa watching Hamilton win the world championship telling the good lady that I don’t feel any worse for wear. I pack my bag ready to go back to the gym on Monday.

Monday morning I wake up and lie there watching the telly felling absolutely fine. But as soon as I get up to get dressed, agony. Having investigated anatomy here I discovered taht my long head biceps, my brachioradialis, my soleus, and my semimimbranosus (basically the upper arms and backs of my calves) are currently unable to work without being painful.

Exercise damages tissue and tears muscles. This pain I am feeling today is a result of these muscle fibres currently being repaired. It is the repair process that makes muscles bigger and stronger so although I have brought my kit bag with me, today will be a day of rest after all.

The other bit of me that has suffered at the hand of exercise, my shoulder and collar bone, seems to be feeling okay today. I’m not going to start to celebrate too soon though as its nagging ache might just be masked by the other areas of more intense pain but hopefully I am on the mend.