Thursday 15/01/09

I missed the gym on Wednesday night. Don’t get me wrong I needed the rest and enjoyed doing other things but in the back of my mind I was aware that I wasn’t getting any fitter while I sat on the sofa, so I was keen to get back into it on Thursday night, and I have some new exercises to tell of.

Warm up, the standard five minutes on the rowing machine.

Dumbbell Bench press. When Fitness Stu went through this exercise with me for some reason we didn’t pick a weight to use so I started with the tried and tested 7.5kgs to start with. This was too light so I went for the 10kgs. Lying on my back I bench press the dumbbells in the same action that you would with barbell. 3 sets of 15reps.

Shoulder press. Seated this time with the 7.5kg weights I hold the weights either side of my head and push upward. This was surprisingly tough. 3 sets of 15, but I faded toward the end and couldn’t complete more than 12 reps.

Pectoral fly machine. Sitting, you pull the two pads together in front of your chest. This machine uses the deltoids but unexplainably a muscle in my neck and chin really hurts towards the end of the reps. 27kgs, 3 sets of 15.

Cardio. 30 minutes. Manual with the incline increasing 1 every 5 minutes. This time, with about 10 minutes to go I had a second wind so upped the speed to 8mph for a sprint finish.

This running malarkey is getting easier. I have only been hard at it for a week and already I am feeling that I can stretch the speed and distance. I am also planning on taking my running out onto the streets in the coming weeks.

Finishing off with a 15 minute swim and 10 minutes in the steam room.

Talking about running, I was notified today that I haven’t won a place with the Great North Run on the free ballot. There are still a few options on a couple of other free ballots to get into this race, but this could put paid to my running of this marathon.

You see, we need to spend a lot of cash pounds to take part in the Devizes to Westminster race as we still don’t have a boat and only have a fraction of the equipment that we need to compete. I am hoping to get sponsorship for some of this and I obviously want to raise money for charity too. To try and collect money for a Great North run charity too will I think be too much.