even though i’m tremendously tired from a long night of eluding sleep, i managed to drag my sorry (non-shrinking) butt to the gym. not only did i do forty minutes of weights but i then took the stairs back home. granted, it was only seventeen flights – nowhere near yesterday’s sixty-nine – but it still kicked my butt. that’s far too much talk about my butt (though there’s more than enough of it to talk about).
today was stairs again. it looked something like this:
– 22
+ 24
– 24
+ 24
– 5
+ 5
– 6
+ 6
– 6
+ 6
– 2
+ 2
– 2
+ 2
– 2
that brings today’s total to 69 flights of stairs up and down or approximately 2484 steps in 55 minutes. the two full climbs weren’t any easier but the shorter pieces after that seemed much easier today. my legs never really gave out on me so maybe i won’t be unable to walk tomorrow. i did a much better job of stretching before and after today, which may have been part of my too-tight-calves last week.
one hour of weights at the gym. for some reason, i’ve always had a much easier time of gymming when i’m doing weights. i don’t get endorphins apparently because i never leave the gym with a feel-good, life-is-great, love-the-burn feeling but, while i completely loathe cardio which feels entirely like work, weights give me a powerful feeling that works well with the loathing i feel while gymming. does that make sense at all?
i was disappointed that i didn’t get to the gym wednesday since this was my first week of trying to get back into a routine but my head was so not into it thanks to all the concrete drilling (yes, today is day 4). yesterday was my cardio day so instead of going to the gym and getting nowhere on the treadmill, hubby and i walked about 4.4 miles on the beach last night. it was a wonderful walk and the sand was great for stretching out my calf muscles that have been so tight since tuesday’s stair-stepping session. between stretching them out on the walk, sitting in the hot tub when we got back, and making myself smell like a little old lady by slathering mineral ice on them before bed, my calves are feeling much looser today. yay for that!
today’s cardio was all walking but it was the most exhausting and excruciating 45 minutes i’ve ever had. i only walked but i walked the stairs. i walked down the east stairs and up the west stairs. for 45 minutes. i’m so done. let’s see if i can calculate my steps.
– 22
+ 24
– 24
+ 24
– 2
+ 2
– 2
+ 2
– 5
+ 5
– 2
carry the one, that’s 57 flights down and 57 flights up for a grand total of 2057 steps. i had to leave the stairwells a few times for a cool-down lap across the building but i stayed in motion the whole time. i’m pretty certain i had at least two coronaries and sweat a gallon and a half. you can see that the last few laps were small, cool-down laps around the top floors of the building (stay close to home in case you die). i’d like to get to the point that walking up the full twenty-four doesn’t kill me. after six or seven flights i am gasping like crazy and my heart is pounding out of my chest. it’s good cardio though and good for my legs so i might try to keep at it and build up my endurance for it. maybe one day i can throw in a third lap of the full building.
three laps in the gulf (a gulf lap is considered one full length of our building) and intended laps in the pool but it was inexplicably crowded so we ended up just floating around trading the bodily coating of salt for chlorine. the gulf is wonderful today. it is as calm as the pool and clearer than i’ve ever seen it. our gulf works like this, there are two sand bars and then a deeper “trench” about 150 yards out and then another shallower area again before it turns to deep blue sea. it is so calm and shallow and clear right now that i can actually see through to the bottom of the deep “trench” from our balcony. i’ve never been able to see through that little band of water. it’s lovely. i adore my backyard. it really helps other stuff to melt away. a little. for a short time.
hubby and i went down to the beach and swam in the gulf for lunch. we did about four laps the length of our building. i’m estimating that was not quite 1,000 feet of swimming. i thought i was going to die. we then went up to the pool to rinse the salt off and swam a couple laps of it. hey, at least we did something, right?
but i finally made it back to the gym. i only did thirty minutes on the treadmill because i was running late on my lunch break but something is better than nothing, right. every night i toy with the idea of setting my clock much earlier so that i can go jogging in the mornings like i did the other day. it really was a nice and peaceful way to start the day (although an hour or two later i was exhausted and thought my head was going to burst). i just don’t know that i can drag myself out of bed any earlier than i already do. i’m just starting to finally get used to the idea of working at 07:00. anyhow, maybe one of these days i’ll win over my body and begin a morning jogging regimen. i bet that would actually get some results if i could do it.
thursday we purchased a kayak for hubby to go with the one that
i won earlier this month. when we brought it home, we put it in the water and took turns trying it out. last night we took both kayaks down to the beach for the official maiden voyage.
they were itching to get in the water
have i mentioned how much i love my backyard?
hubby paddling into the sunset
our kayaks missed each other
you wouldn’t believe how long i chased this stupid jelly around trying to get a pic
they’re fast little buggers
unfortunately, i didn’t find my shark (although hubby finally saw one this morning from the balcony – he said it was right out in front of our building, about twenty feet from swimmers). we didn’t paddle far at all (since i spent all that time going in circles chasing jellies). but we stayed out on the water for close to an hour and had a great time. we even found a few waves to surf.
i woke up just before 0400 because i had to pee. after that, i could not get back to sleep. i woke hubby up for a few minutes but he was able to go right back to sleepi (i hate that about him). i got up and went out to the balcony to watch the moon over the water for a bit. i rummaged in the dark through our closet to find batteries for my camera (both sets of batteries are dead; anyone know where my charger is???) and tried to take pictures of the moon but, as much as i heart my camera, it sucks in low light. it was beautiful though. it was a full, orange moon. it was behind a light cloud so the cloud was glowing orange with just the tip of the moon peeking out over top and then there was a trail of the orange moonlight all the way across the water into the shore. it was wonderous. shame about the lack of good photo. this doesn’t do it justice at all. and it was after the clouds moved away.
about 0500 i laid back down and tried to go back to sleep. no such luck. at 0530 i decided to get up and go jogging on the beach. while i am not a morning person or jogger at all, it was very nice and peaceful out. there are no waves so the water just lapped at the shore and my feet a little. it was cool and quiet and relaxing (in a i-am-so-not-a-jogger/morning-person kind of way). my goal was to go to a building that would have made it about three miles round trip. i’d say i was about a quarter-mile from that buildng when i got an unexpected jogging companion. i kid you not, five feet away from me a shark was swimming the shoreline. it was only a baby, three feet from nose to tail, but it was soooo cool! i was very excited and ticked off that i didn’t have my camera. it stayed five to eight feet away for probably thirty yards before it finally decided to swim back out to sea. i could have reached out and touched it, it was so close. i’m no shark expert, but i’m pretty sure it was a black tip based on body style. clearly, i need a super tiny, high-tech, spy camera. something tiny that i could carry on me at all times no matter what i’m doing but takes great pix. yes, i did vent to the shark about him having the audacity to show up when i was completely cameraless. maybe he’ll come back around while we’re kayaking this weekend so that i can get his closeup. we’ve also had a six foot or so eagle ray passing by the last couple of days. i had no batteries in my camera yesterday. i did get a couple pictures today but he was much farther out and you can’t hardly make it out as an eagle ray.
forty-five minutes on the treadmill, plus i took the seventeen flights of stairs down to the gym and back up. am i dead yet???
i got wrapped up in a training class i was presenting yesterday and never got a chance to post my lunch-gymming. i don’t care if it is of no interest to you – it helps keep me accountable to have it posted. since i had the training to do, i was short on time. i got down there later than usual and the place was packed. the only thing open was an elliptical so i did ten minutes on it (still doesn’t fit me right), then moved to an open bike for two minutes until a treadmill finally opened. i did twenty-three minutes on the treadmill for a total of thirty-five minutes of cardio. better than nothing. to help cool down before coming back up to start my class, i did 150 crunches on the sit-up bench.
another forty-five minutes on the treadmill! whoohooo! i miss the ellipticals at our old gym. i’d like to mix up my cardio a bit but the ellipticals here just really don’t fit me and exercise bikes bore me to tears. all i can do is the treadmill (in the gym). and even that is limited because they’re not near as good quality as my treadmill (that i still heart) in storage so i can’t really run on them because they feel like they’ll fall to pieces. i need to get out and run on the beach some but it’s very florida out there.
