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Good afternoon!

I spent most of yesterday in recovery mode from my three days straight of exercising. I pretended that I thought the gym would be shut yesterday, being a Sunday and all, and gave myself the ‘day off’. I really couldn’t do anything much anyway since I couldn’t even straighten my arms!

Now that I’m trying to be health conscious I’ve decided that if I’m going to drink alcohol then I’d better not drink really fattening drinks. So it’s out with the champagne and in with vokda, lime and soda. That’s a kind of dangerous drink though, so refreshing that it just slides down easily, too easily.

Now that my knee that I damaged on the chin up machine slip up is a bit better I went for a walk on the beach this morning. A lot of people use the treadmills at the gym, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why anybody would prefer to walk on a bit of black tread in front of a video screen when there’s a beautiful beach a couple of hundred metres away.

I also went to a new class this morning called ’sculpt’ class. I’m sure I would have preferred the pottery variety class, but the first part of it involved a lot of going up and down on a step and lifting weights (I chose the lightest ones I could find).

I was half dead five minutes into the routine, and realised just how un-co my body is with those exercises. Luckily for me there was a lovely woman who’d have been 70 if she was a day who took me under her wing and guided me in the ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’. While I was huffing and puffing against the wall hugging my towel and drink bottle she was spritely leaping up and down off the step, not missing a beat!

Eventually the step torture was over and we had to put back our steppers. I was quietly smug thinking I’d ’sort of kind of’ gotten through the class okay, but then to my dismay it wasn’t over at all. There was more pain to come. There were curls, and crunches, and some other things I couldn’t discern. Thank God we were lying down, I didn’t look too conspicuous impersonating a dead body on the floor.

Finally the class was over and I thanked the old dear behind me for helping me out. She assured me that we all have to start somewhere and waved goodbye to me as I ran out the door as fast as my weary legs would carry me. She was staying for the next class!

I don’t think I’m ever going to be as fit as the 70 year old :/ Wonder if she drinks……

Oh my God! I can’t move. Well, not my arms at least. I stupidly thought that since I woke up the morning after the first gym workout and I didn’t feel too bad that this decrepid old body of mine could handle another trip to the gym. Cleary I was mistaken. I probably only have myself to blame. I got on the rowing machine and discovered after I’d pushed a few buttons that I could race the machine. Cool! I only rowed for 1km, but then I went on some of the other machines.

I had an unfortunate experience on the chin up machine. It’s an odd looking contraption. You set the weight that you want to lift on the side, and then you climb up and kneel on this pad and do your chin ups. Yes, well I forgot how to set the weights didn’t I, and so instead of any assistance from the machine I had basically set it to say that I could lift my own weight. Nope - I can’t! As I knelt onto the pad the whole thing went zooming down and I was left dangling in mid air! I kind of crashed off the machine, much to the amusement of onlookers. Apart from a bruise or two, my pride was the only thing suffering pain.

I went to aqua aerobics yesterday. That was fun! Lots of shall we say ‘mature aged’ women were in my class, they were all very nice and it was most pleasant.

But, today I really cannot move my arms. I certainly can’t straighten them and they hurt, they hurt a lot! I think I need some alcohol to numb the pain…. but that’ll only undo everything I’m trying to do. This sucks!

Well I survived my very first trip to the gym. I ache a bit already, so I think I’m probably going to wake up in the morning thinking I have polio.

PT was a very nice young man, and as he’s a rugby player, and I coach rugby, we had much to talk about while I huffed, puffed and tried not to whine.

First up he put me on a rowing machine. That wasn’t too bad actually, but then he made me do some chin ups on a custom designed chinup torture contraption. Er…. I can’t do chinups, I have NEVER been able to do chinups! I tried though, and I got through a couple of sets of 12. Then he made me do a couple more. God it hurt! I tried to distract him and tell him he couldn’t count properly, and he had to help me a bit in the last few.

After he’d numbed my arms, I had some leg push machine to go on. That wasn’t too bad either, and then I had some chest press machine to have a go at. My cover was blown when I ran into one of the guys who works at the local pub. I had to confess that I knew him because he sees me often…. uh oh.

I had to do some other exercises, and I can’t really remember what they or the machines were, I was feeling a bit disoriented by then! PT did give me a nice little massage a couple of times though.. yeah!! I resisted the temptation to request that we skip the exercise bits entirely and go straight to the massage, I have no idea why I did that!

PT tells me I should do that like 3 times a week to see the benefit of it. I don’t reckon I’m going to be able to move at all tomorrow - I’m not looking forward to it!

Ack! I ache…. maybe I could put a weight in my computer mouse and alternate hands instead, wonder if that would tone anything up?