Born Again Gym Rat: Back From the Land of Oz

Monday, December 14, 2015

Back From the Land of Oz

Today's Selfie

I did work out a few times while I was on vacation but my main source of exercise was trekking through countless miles of theme park. My husband has an app on his phone that tallies his steps and converts them to miles. One day we trekked 11 miles although my son says I should pull a mile out of my tally since I opted out of the wild coaster rides while he and my husband stood in line and inched their way closer to each event.

Being back is a bit surreal. Never mind that it's warmer now than when we left NY, arriving at JFK with down coats in balmy 50F weather. The zipper broke off my duffle bag in transit. Luckily the bag stayed closed until we got home. The Air Train was out of service so we had to pile onto a bus to get to Long Term Parking. It was highly remininescent of taking the "special" to HS back in the 70s. Half those buses didn't have windows, and we had to share the bus with students from St. Ursula. Those were the biggest, meanest girls in plaid skirts I've ever encountered. My husband couldn't find his keys (he had packed them in his luggage and would have to unpack to find them) so luckily I had my set handy. Unfortunately, neither of us could remember exactly where we had parked the car, but we found it eventually. We unpacked, had a post-midnight snack of dumplings, started laundry while fending off the hysterical joy of our dog (we had a dog sitter come while we were away) and finally went to bed around 4 am. My hubs had to leave for Boston the next afternoon. My son and I put up our miniature Christmas tree, with lights and miniature decorations. It's definitely surrreal.

Today, the gym is crowded because the air is wet and nippy. For Florida. But this is ridiculously warm for New York. My new gym bag is waaay to big. And once I've crammed everything into my locker, I realize that I've forgotten my lock. Actually, I have no idea where that lock is now, and I'm forced to purchase a cheap, new lock. It's really lightweight which means it's easy to break off with a locksnipper should the lock fail. Well, I can still work out.

I'm satisfied with my workout. Not quite 7 miles, but not too shabby. Three sets of hammer grip pull ups and I probably could've done 4 sets. I swapped the side planks for the bird dog planks, which made it easier to do te Hindu (Dand) push ups. I still do bird dog planks, but at the end when all I have left are One-Leg Push Ups, which are actually kind of easy. When I get to the DB area it's empty, which is the way I like it. But it soon fills up with bodies, mostly new ones. It's hard not to bump into each other, and it's annoying when the girl doing goblet squats can't put the DB back in the correct spot on the rack. Am I a grouch? Only when it's crowded with newbies.

I see a lot of regulars like Shaggy, SunBird, creepy PJ Pants. I can hear the Mayor although I don't actually see him. Tomorrow is a school half day so I'll try to get to the gym early to whack the kickboxing machine. I also have a parent-teacher conference. Later, I told my son we'd go to the Mall to deliver his letter to Macy's Red Mailbox to Santa (each letter received results in a donation to Make A Wish), and maybe the "real" Santa will be there for a photo opp.

I also need to replace my old pair of Maui Jim sunglasses, lost on the Star Tours ride at Disney's Hollywood Studios Theme Park. I went to Guest Relations at the end of the day to see if anyone had turned them in. The staff had a pair of Maui Jim's that looked like mine but didn't quite feel right. The staff insisted I take them. The park was closing and no one else had claimed them. But when I got back to the resort, I realized that these were bifocals! Not my sunglasses after all! Ugh. Still, we had a great time, although I'm not really feeling relaxed, or rested. Just spacey. Happily, after eating out for an entire week, the gym scale reads 110.0 lbs even, which is pretty dang good.

Monday Workout
(6.72 miles total cardio)

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1RM

Lifting Logs