Illicit workouts...

If there’s anything better than the first punnet of strawberries in springtime then I don’t know what it is. Technically I should have waited until Labour Weekend, but they were sitting there calling to me. So red, so fat, so juicy. Regretfully, the strawberries exist no more. They disappeared into my stomach devastatingly quickly. Mmmm…

I’ve had a good week this week. I started off obeying Duck and keeping things light. There was the short half hour on Monday, which I planned to follow up with a rolling hill run on Tuesday. Here’s where I find out whether my trainer reads my blog or not…

I bumped into Duck and Ingrid on my way to Balance and stopped to say hello. Duck then told me that I wasn’t to do anything else that day. For once I had no intention of doing what I was told. Sarah and I had already arranged to meet up after work for a half hour run. It was a nice day and I was itching to get back out there.

So, at 5.15 I was standing around nervously outside the gym hoping I wasn’t about to get sprung. Sarah came bounding down to meet me and we agreed to run up to the Botanical Gardens. We ended up flying up Bowen, with me keeping pace most of the way. By the time I got to the top I could feel every little bit of congestion left in my lungs, which were rattling again. Oops.

I caught my breath at the lights, then it was up and around the duck pond, over to the rose gardens, up the Serpentine Path (where I got chased by a strange white cat), back over to the rose gardens, then down through the cemetery and along the motorway to Aurora Terrace, down the Terrace to Bowen, then back to the gym. Thirty minutes all up, with a fair percentage of hill work. I was coughing and spluttering for the rest of the night…

Wednesday did, however, end up being an unintentional rest day. It was absolutely bucketing down when I was considering running at lunchtime, and then some friends from Auckland arranged to meet Hamish and I after work on their way through to the airport. I figured the rest probably wouldn’t hurt.

On Thursday I was expecting Duck to take things lightly. All the bikes were taken so I ran 2km on the treadmill to warm up instead. Then it was up to the studio where I was made to crab step lengths of the studio, followed by lengths of knee raises, then bounding knee raises, then crab steps with a squat in the middle of each step. Then it was some knee raises on the box step and some upper body and core work with the power bags. Oh, and Duck had me stooped over pushing a power bag up and down the studio floor. Brilliant, mad fun that nearly killed me. I was drenched with sweat by the end of it all and spent the rest of the day in a happy post-exercise fog.

I followed that with RPM on Friday morning. I couldn’t do Balance because our team was in an all-day workshop at a near-by conference centre. Instead I drank four glasses of wine and ate way too many savouries. Oops, again. All of which meant that I was sure my scheduled one hour run was going to be painful today. I made it to the Terrace gym just before 9. It was horrifically windy again, so I decided to stay inland. Unfortunately that meant that I was going to have to negotiate a series of traffic lights. Normally that would bother me. Today I was sure I’d be grateful of the breaks.

From the gym I ran down Lambton Quay at an easy pace. At this hour of the morning there were very few people out, so I didn’t have to do too much weaving. I ran up Willis, down Manners Street to Dixon, then up Taranaki. From Taranaki I ran up the rolling hills of Wallace Street to Newtown, then back down Adelaide and Cambridge to Courtney Place. When I got back to Xtreme I turned up Taranaki again, along Webb, down Willis and back to the Terrace gym via Lambton Quay again.

So how was it? It felt slow and it felt nasty, but at least I didn’t have any stomach issues. I can certainly feel that some of my strength has been lost over the break, but things aren’t catastrophically bad. When I looked at my watch and saw I’d only been running for half an hour I have to admit to having a bad moment, but I just kept on keeping on, and I got through in the end.

From there it was straight into Balance. We did release 37, which I do like. My shoulders were still sore from Duck on Thursday, which made the warrior poses interesting. My hips were a bit tight from the running and my hamstrings felt quite short. I let myself take things easy and enjoyed myself.

So there it was, two hours of exercise on a Saturday morning. It feels soooo good to be back into things again. I feel so much happier when I work out. I’ve been feeling quite tired this afternoon, but in the best possible way. I’ll do a short run tomorrow then try for a longer run again on Monday night. Yay!