Trading Off

Overall color sucks but
the tank is correctly violet

My upper back is achy and sore but not enough to keep me from doing anything. My shoulder hurts a tad too. The day starts out cold but promises to become nearly tropical within a few hours. Ain't Spring grand? I've decided that if I'm going to add Intervals to my routine twice a week, then I need to cut back the cardio somewhere else, most likely warm ups. Not kill warm ups entirely though. That's just asking for trouble! Instead, today I do 15 minutes on the cross-trainer before a set of hammer grip pull ups, knee-ins, push ups, crunches and planks. I'm warm but not sweaty.

Because I can never tell if I'll be able to use the Smith, I've tossed my Rogue Proloc collars into my gear bag. They make my gym bag much heavier than I'd like, because they weigh a good pound or so even though they're heavy duty nylon, not metal. (I can't remember exactly, but I do remember putting them on the digital scale once so I could calculate just how much weight I was moving. But that was years ago, and I've since forgotten.) Today I can use the Smith so I'm pretty happy.

My philosophy is to get the heavy stuff out of the way early in the week, adding leftovers and other sundries later on. It's a heavy pull day if I don't wimp out. Injuries are a great excuse not to improve. I'm a little tired of incremental weights on the RDL so I jump the weight from 120 to 140 instead of 130. I can inch up to 150 afterwards. I've gone heavier in the distant past. But it's been a long time. I'm just happy I can get 6 reps with decent form. The gym is humid now and there are a lot more lunchtime bodies milling about. RG BB Rows have been hard on my elbows so I've kept the reps high and the sets low. Perhaps I'll up the weight a tad just to keep some semblance of progress?

Seated One-Arm Cable Rows make my hands hurt so I always trade my gloves for neoprene grip pads. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in my gear bag. Luckily, being small means all my stuff is fairly small too. By the last set, my left hand has started to lose it's ability to grip properly. Good thing I'm off to do cardio. My plan is to do 30 minutes of Intervals. I didn't charge my iPod or my headphones last night though. Usually they're good for two days. But not today. 17 minutes into the Intervals and a disembodied voice tells me Battery Low. It becomes more and more insistent until it finally shuts down. Not the iPod, the headphones. I shut my cardio down prematurely at 19 minutes, but it's not like I skipped Intervals completely. The gym music isn't quite loud enough to compensate for no working tunes, but I'm too lazy to rush back to my locker and grab the wired pair of earphones. Instead, I stretch and do a quick set of wide hammer grip pull ups.

I read a magazine article on doing drop sets starting with wide grip pull ups, then chin ups, then finally hammer grip pull ups. Looking at the Stretch Cage roof, I'm not sure I can do regular pull ups. Being at the very edge of the roof makes me nervous even though the unit weighs much more than I do (180 lbs), and I've seen much bigger guys do pull ups there. Most chin up/pull up bars are too wide for my tiny hands to fully grip and that's a problem. At some point I'll get braver. Just like I got brave enough to try wide hammer grip pull ups.

While I was on the cardio platform I notice two giggly high school girls on the treadmills. They're tall, blonde and slender with ponytails pulled tight. When they get off, they take turns on some of the Cybex machines. Two more high school girls join them. While they are of varying heights, they're all blonde and slender with hair pulled back off their faces like ballerinas. I'm sure they're the Popular Girls at school. When I was in Middle School, the popular JAP (Jewish American Princess) girls all had long brown hair parted down the middle, wore white jeans, buffalo sandals and Huckapoo shirts. (Yes, I'm a child of the 70s.) Well, at least they're sort of working out...

Lately, some of the women have been smiling at me. I'm dense enough to not know exactly why. In the locker room Eyebrows makes a point of smiling at me. Weird. I haven't seen her since last summer. She's grown several inches and towers over me with long slender limbs. I think she's the girl I yelled at for laying her sweaty body all over the locker room bench, but I could be wrong. (All these white girls look alike sometimes.) The last time I saw her out in the gym area, she had managed a half-ass kipping pull up at the MaxRack. Well, at least it wasn't at the Assisted Pull Up machine. I'm not an unfriendly person when I work out. I'm just very focused. I think that weirds a lot of the guys out, but too many of them spend too much time chatting. Like The Mayor.

Of course, there are a lot of guys who come solo and actually work. I find a few of them glancing over nervously. Do I make them nervous? Maybe that's a good thing. I've read that nothing makes men more competitive than having a woman around. Hhmmmm...

My postcards arrived today and I'm excited! Now I need to buy stamps and figure out my mailing list. I've created an emailable version as well. The hard part will be actually matting and assembling all my framed images. And then I'll probably wind up hanging the show myself because hubs will be in Houston or JFK... Oh well. Could be worse.

I'm just not sure what to do about the conflict my son will have since his belt test is the same day as my Artist's Reception...


Tuesday

15 min x-trainer
Calories 71
Miles 1.90
Average Heart Rate 157

HGPU 26
Knee-Ins 50
Push Ups 50
Crunches 3 x 50
Bird Dogs 2 x 60s
Side Planks 2 x 60s

Smith RDLs
Bar (30) x 15
80 x 12
100 x 12
120 x 12
140 x 8
150 x 6 Yaaay!

Smith RG BB Rows
80 x 25 reps
100 x 25
120 x 25

Seated 1-Arm Row
30lbs x 12
60 x 8 reps (bottom rt elbow twinges)
60 x 8 (bottom left elbow WTH?)
60 x 8 (left hand grip last 2 reps)

19 min elliptical low battery
Intervals
Miles 1.70
Calories 193
Headphones dead!
 
Wide HGPU 12