Trigirl!

Well, I tried and completely failed to post a Poetry Thursday poem, because this week's task was to choose something and lie about it. Turns out I cannot tell a lie...

So what does a girl do when overburdened by honesty? She heads to the gym for some cross-training. Let's start with ten minutes on a treadmill (head down in the hope that the girls who had promised to slap me if I ran before Christmas wouldn't see me). Let's call that ten measley SLOW minutes at a 10kph pace, and I'm alarmed at how high my heartrate got, despite my breathing feeling fine. The knee felt ok as well, though I wouldn't have been wanting to run for an hour on it. Let's see what the podiatrist says on Tuesday!

Let's follow that up with 45 minutes of RPM. I haven't done one of Stephan's classes in months, and I'd forgotten how good it is to have a technically proficient instructor at the front of the class reminding me about technique regularly and hitting all the cues in the music. I had a great, sociable class chatting to the people next to me (in between dying), and opted for speed today, while still amping the dial up on the last few tracks. No jumps - my poor gluts couldn't have liked me very much if I'd succumbed to the temptation. As I was leaving Stephan asked whether I was doing Lake Taupo this weekend. I wish - I'll just leave that to Nic and Leonie this year!

A few minutes talking to another injured Jog Squadder, then it was into the shower, and then out into the showers (Wellington's in the midst of torrential downpours) to drive to the pool for my lesson with Lesleigh.

I was ten minutes early for our lesson, so got in some aqua jogging first. I've finally nailed the technique - legs straight down and fully extended. However, the striking feature of the last two pool sessions has been the lack of fear instinct kicking in. Previously, even though I knew I was safe, some primal part of me would over-ride my rational mind and amp up the adrenalin. Thankfully my rational mind was stubborn enough not to give in, and it seems the primal self is rolling over and going back to sleep. I'm having too much fun now to give in to the fear factor.

Today Lesleigh had me do a couple of lengths with the kickboard. We switched to some larger flippers, and my feet stopped cramping. She then had me holding onto the kickboard with one arm and swimming on my side. We were practicing the freestyle breathing position. It took me a couple of tries to get what I was supposed to do, and it felt weird to have only one ear under the water. However before long I was swimming along quite happily on my left side. My right side took a little more practice, but by the end of 20 minutes I had the technique down. Ironically I may yet turn out to be a good swimmer!

Out of the pool, a quick trip to the Swim Shop to buy some flippers, a dash through the supermarket, and home by 11.30. Hamish got out of bed at mid-day, but then, given the weather today, I had told him to stay there!

Out again to lunch with an American friend-of-a-friend, Dara, who has just moved down here and is looking for work. We ended up sitting in The Matterhorn for over two hours talking. Then off home again.

All in all a good day, and it's only 7pm. We're supposed to be going out to a vj friend of Hamish's party tonight. It's still pouring out and I may yet spend the night on the sofa...

Oh, and a new low this morning - 54.6! Not that I'm counting ... in fact as I type this I'm eating Dark Ghana, so no fear of an eating disorder anywhere around here...