Cardio for Crazies

I forgot to pack my towel in my gym gear today, but I didn't realize it until it was time to shower. Ugh. Luckily I always have a few spare hand towels in my bag, just in case. Which means I get on the gym scale in just my sweat-drenched underwear (because a hand towel isn't going to cover anything!) and gasp a little. It reads 109.4 lbs, which is more than 2 lbs less than yesterday. Weird, right? Well, considering the workout I put my son through today, maybe not.

It's already hot (85F) and humid by the time we get to the gym around noon. The sun is scorching, but the recent rains make everything steamy. There's no relief except indoors to air conditioning. My son wants to do 30 minutes on the treadmill first. I've already told him that the Step Mill, Expresso Bike and Walking Lunges are on the agenda for today.

"So it's a cardio day?" he asks.
Yep. He's fine with that. Secretly, I think he's concerned about getting bulky.

I keep my pace the same as when I was recuperating from eye surgery. My eye still bothers me, mostly with a dull ache in the morning and a sandy feeling whenever I'm not focused on something else. This is going to be extremely annoying when I have the other eye done, because then both eyes will ache and itch. Ugh. I tend to squint as my eyes get tired, but I've discovered that if I consciously widen my eyelids, my vision improves a little. As my eyelids narrow, my eyelashes make reading harder. It's the peripheral fringe of fuzzy dark spikes that encroaches on my visual field. Yet, better to have lashes than not.

Of course, this is all since I started using Travatan® and latanoprost before that. That's the same drug family that's advertised to increase eyelash lengths (a là Brook Shields). And boy does it work! I had sparse, barely-there lashes until then! What I can't understand is how people with naturally long luxurious lashes manage to see at all! My mother used to glue false eyelashes to her lids when she wanted to dress up, but ultimately, she'd complain it was like wearing spiders on your face. I totally agree with that.

My son has his earbuds plugged into his phone and he watches YouTube videos while walking on the treadmill, or the stairs. I turn on the TV function to watch reruns of Supernatural, which is entering its 14th season and 300th episode. That's pretty amazing. My son actually thought that Buffy The Vampire Slayer was a bad knock-off of Supernatural because time references mean little in a streaming universe. What Buffy reminds me of is an old favorite, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which only ran for one season with 20 episodes. My hubs has that all on DVDs.

We jump on the Stretch Cage to do pull ups because the Expresso bikes are popular today. Halfway through our set my son tells me that the bikes are free. But I want to finish before moving on to a different exercise. My son isn't thrilled with pull ups, but today I get him to do one more than Wednesday. I ask him if he feels stronger and he says "No, just tired." Well, at least he's honest. We select the dragon game for 15 minutes. There's a lot of obstacles to pedaling around, collecting floating coins and bumping dragons for extra points. My son's hair is plastered to his head. Sweat drips off my nose and down the back of my neck.

"Are we done yet?"
"We haven't done our lunges!"

We also still have some core to work on. After push ups, crunches and planks, my son is lying face down on the squishy mat and tells me he feels like taking a nap. Lunges first, I say. Then a quick stretch for the lower back and hips and we'll be done. I don't actually feel tired. But I am hungry. I'm used to doing so much more. Perhaps that's not normal? I'm bummed that I don't get that exhilarating sense of well-being from these workouts. If anything, I feel something akin to being sad. Not overwhelmingly sad, but something just under the surface. It's weird and I wonder if my hormones are out of whack. Perhaps next week I'll actually push myself a bit harder and see how I feel afterwards. Exercise has been my refuge, relief and escape. If it's not working anymore, then I'll have to try something new. I'm a gym rat after all.

Cardio Friday

30 min treadmill
Incline 10% Speed 3
Calories 263
Miles 1.48
Average Heart Rate 113 (70%) / max HR 131(80%)

15 StepMill
Speed 3
Total steps 565
Floors 35
Calories 88
129 Average HR

HGPU 20, 15, 10, 8 (53)
M pull ups 10, 6, 3, 2 (21)

15 Expresso Bike
Dragon game
Calories 42
Points 73950
Distance 2.26

Push Ups 20 + 10 + 10 (pause at the top for 5 seconds)
(M 20 + 10)

Side Planks 2 x 60s
Bird Dogs 2 x 60s
Elbow Plank 60s
Bicycles 50
Crunches 30/20

Walking Lunges 34 (M 28)

Stretch