Monday, April 23, 2007

Excuse me? Where are my endorphins?

by Suw on April 23, 2007

Yesterday, as per Saturday's post, Kevin and I went to our gym induction sessions at the local leisure centre, where the lovely Frances introduced us to the machinery.
Now, I've never been to a gym before. I used to go to Tai Chi twice a week and, for a while back in the mid 90s, I had thighs like rocks and could fell a man twice my size with a mere nudge to his kneecap. It's all been downhill since then. Add that lack of fitness to my rabid neophobia and my rampant fear of social humiliation, and you have a fabulous opportunity for me to run away and hide behind the sofa. (Dr Who used to have roughly the same effect.)
But with Kevin there to hold my hand, and Frances being really friendly and nice, and the gym being relatively quiet, I actually managed to get through my induction without any moments of hideous embarrassment.
So this is my regime. (Please forgive the lack of technical language.)
1. 10 minutes on the treadmill at an incline of 1.5, speed of 6.0. (I have no idea what units these are measured in, but I think that kilometres might have something to do with it.)
2. 15 minutes on the recumbent bike, level 3, 60 rpm.
3. 2 x 15 reps on the arm pully inny thingie.
4. 2 x 15 reps on the thighy squeezy thingie.
5. 2 x 15 reps on the thighy anti-squeezy pushy thingie.
6. 2 x 15 reps on the leggy pushy thingie.
The last four all have weights attached, but I can't remember what they are for each one, but at least for the leggy pushy thingie, it's the lowest it can be. It's all written down in a booklet that you leave that the gym, so I'll have to check it the next time I'm there.
After Frances showed me everything and I'd done half the amount of exercise that I am scheduled to do in a work out, she showed me some stretches and asked if I wanted to stay to do a full workout. Not on your nellie. My legs were already wobbly and I only did half of what I was supposed to!
This morning, though, Kev and I were up at the crack of dawn and were down the gym, raring to go by 8.30am.
That might possibly be an exaggeration for at least one of us. We were down the gym at 8.30am, but 'raring' wasn't entirely my condition. I did everything I was supposed to do, except that I knocked 5 mins off the bike because I was a bit worried about us getting home in time for Kev to get to work. I wasn't in too much pain afterwards, which was a relief, but we have at least 24 hours before the muscle shock kicks in. I may not be quite so relieved tomorrow.
I have been told that doing a good vigourous workout regularly, including cardiovascular exercise, will not only make me slim and lithe and sylph-like again, but will also give me more energy and make me feel better. This is what I've been told.
I haven't seen any evidence of it yet. I noticed elevated heart rate, although that's hardly difficult to achieve given that my usual exercise regime is moving from bed to couch to fridge to couch to corner shop for ice cream to couch… I also noticed wobbly legs, wherein one suddenly starts channelling Bambi at birth. And I noticed a loss from my bank account of about 30 quid each month.
But I was promised endorphins, dammit! Where are they? I was promised more energy! I was promised feelings of wellbeing! These things have been dangled in front of me like the gilded carrot of anticipation! Yet where are they? Dammit, who stole my endorphins and when do I get them back?
Fine. I'll just go and eat some chocolate instead. See if I care.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Divide and conquer

by Suw on April 23, 2007

We obviously need more chickens patrolling the streets. (Thanks Mooc!)

Technorati Tags:

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Neil Gaiman at Cody's

by Suw on April 23, 2007

In that sad and slightly pathetic way that self-employed people deal with such things, I'm attempting to have a few days off this week. It's not a holiday as such – I'm not going anywhere, I'm not escaping my laptop, and I'm not slumped on the sofa watching the TV. (Mainly because our sofa is not good for slumping on, having been made by someone who believed that people should Sit Up Straight at all times, but also because our TV is a small box that one plugs into the computer in order to provide us with endless hours of joy adjusting the exact positioning of our small internal aerial which – as with all small internal aerials – is never quite in exactly the right place.)
My friend Steve has kindly offered to break all my fingers if I do any work this week, but I have a day of proper work on Friday, and in the meantime I have odds and sods that I need to do or else people will be unhappy with me. I'd like to ignore email if I could, although some might argue that my new method for dealing with it (put all mail in a folder marked 'Pending' until I have time to look at it) is exactly the same as ignoring it, but I am scanning the inbox for urgent missives that demand my attention or, at least, make me feel guilty for not replying sooner to some previous plea for assistance.
In lieu of actually having a proper holiday that involves beaches, warm sun and mojitos served to me by a nicely tanned cabana boy, I am doing the next best thing. I'm sitting slightly stiffly on my landlady's choice of slightly-too-short couch and watching Neil Gaiman do a reading and answer questions at Cody's last year.
I embed the player here for your delectation. If you have a couple of hours to spare, watch it. Neil is really very, very good at doing readings and answering questions. In fact, I wonder sometimes why he doesn't do stand-up comedy, because he's very funny.

Primarily, though, I embed the video here so that I can come back to it tomorrow and try to finish it off. It conks out for me at around the 01:19:10 mark, and even if I can manually move the playback head forward a minute or two, it just conks out again after playing me a tantalising snippet. I'm not sure whether it's just that Neil's east coast fans have all woken up and, seeing the post he posted at 9.33pm last night have decided to join me in attempting to watch Neil at Cody's, thus causing Fora.tv to conk out. Or maybe it's just that it conks out at 01:19:10, or thereabouts, for some unexplained technical reason. I guess I'll have to wait til I wake tomorrow morning, when our friends across the water are asleep, to find out.
UPDATE: Still can't get the last section to play smoothly, so have instead downloaded it. If you want to do the same, go to the Fora.tv site, launch the player, and look for the 'download' link in the top right-hand corner.
And whilst I'm doing the fan thing, I bought Fragile Things yesterday, finally. Feh, some fan I am… Anyway, I'm going to read it to Kevin just as soon as we finish Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising pentology, which I have loved for the best part of my adult life, and which Kevin now also adores. I don't think Kev's ever read any of Neil's work, though, so it'll be fun to start off with a book neither of us are familiar with. Don't tell him, but I'm hoping to convert Kev into a fan, so that maybe he'll stop rolling his eyes every time I mention Neil.
Which reminds me, I have Neil's keyboard, signed and dated (1986 – 1989) and complete with coffee stains and other markings of dubious provenance sitting just in front of me. I must a) take lots of photographs of it and b) arrange a time to give it to the most fabulous Mr Ben Goldacre, who won it in the ORG raffle, so he can finish his own book off on it.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

{ Comments on this entry are closed }