Happy Happy Wednesday

I thought the weather would be a tad better today. It's definitely warmer, but just as humid. Dense fog blanketed the bus stop this morning and I reminded my son to bring home his raincoat this afternoon. He'll probably forget. Today is Leg Day and I have my shorts on under my yoga pants because I have to put gas in the car and I'm not comfortable walking around in public attired in running shorts. Especially gas stations.

The gym, once again, is sporadically empty, filling up only for the Fitness Class. I get on my favorite elliptical and accidentally punch in hill #5, but I'm too lazy to reset everything. 35 minutes gives me 3.96 miles which is respectable. The man on the station to my left seems to be running a marathon on his elliptical as he huffs and puffs. I punch in interval #7 for my second set and get 4.32 miles and a big sweaty grin. Actually, I'd started feeling really good during the last 10 minutes of the first set and never took my hoodie off. It's absolutely drenched but I don't care.

I stretch at the Cage and then do Squats at the Smith machine. They feel okay but I'd noticed that my right knee was a little sensitive today. Six sets of 12 reps feels okay and I'm wondering if it's time to go back to the 115 lbs I used to squat. Deadlifts, on the other hand, just take my breath away and I'm content to grit my teeth through five sets at 95 lbs. Between sets I feel like throwing up just a little but that always passes. I pace and breathe hard, prepping myself for the next set.

R enters the area and I think about saying Hi to him and telling him how smart he was not to get those steroid shots for back pain considering the news this morning about fungal contamination leading to meningitis and two deaths down south. But he didn't want to talk yesterday and I'm not in the mood to talk to him today, especially when I feel like throwing up. I go off to do Seated Leg Curls and then Leg Extensions. Afterwards there's the Mat stretch. I feel pretty good, all in all.

Today's Total Workout:
35 min hill #5 = 3.96 miles + 35 min intervals #7 = 4.32 miles  Total = 8.28 miles
Cage stretch
Smith Squats: 12 @ bar / 6 x 12 @ 95 lbs
Smith Deadlifts: 5 x 12 @ 95 lbs
Seated Leg Curls: 15 @ 75 / 3 x 15 @ 90 lbs
Seated Leg Extensions: 5 x 12 @ 45 lbs (I'm such a loser on this exercise)
Twist Ab Station: 2 x 25 @ 50 lbs (feeling guilty about not doing abs so I do two light sets here)
Mat stretch

The scale, thankfully, reads 107.8 lbs. My hair is still dripping from the workout as I turn on the shower. I'm starving though. I'm still having my one cup of Starbucks Via coffee with sugar and half & half, and a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast. But this week I made McCann's steel cut oatmeal that takes almost an hour to cook. So I made a lot of it and put it in the fridge. I haven't quite figured out what the equivalent portion is to a packet of instant though. I'm tossing in freeze-dried peaches my husband bought from an online camping supply store. Freeze-dried fruit reconstitutes in hot cereal really well. And they're pretty tasty right out of the can. I've already eaten the strawberries (in my morning oatmeal). The assortment pack also contains cans of banana, pineapple, mango and raspberries.

When I get home, I realize that I've got nearly half a dozen speckled bananas in desperate need of being recycled into banana bread. I have my grandmother's recipe, but at my son's insistence, I've added dark chocolate chips as well (which means cutting the sugar even further). No pecans or walnuts to add so it's just chocolate chip banana bread tonight for dessert. Yum!