How Time Flies . . .
Wow, I just got done posting to the exercise section of my blog. I just posted the results of today's workout. Yes I went to the gym. I realized the last time I posted to the Exercise portion of my blog was way back in September. 6 months. Now I've done a couple of workouts since that posting, but none of them in the Gym. Amazing. I honestly didn't think it had been that long since I had been in the gym. YIKES. I had a great workout today. You can see the whole workout here: Workout Results for 3/31/06. I signed up for the Men's Health Personal Trainer service a few days ago. One of the problems I have with the gym is I get bored doing the same thing day after day. So the MHPT service creates workout plans and eating plans for you to follow. My hope is that this keeps the workouts varied enough to keep my interest. I've set it up to create workouts for Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I missed Wednesday this week and the MHPT has a "postpone workout" button that you can re-schedule a workout. So I did the workout today that I was supposed to do on Wednesday. Today's got pushed off to Monday, etc. I'm combining Strength Training with Cardio this time too. So my workouts will be longer, which is fine. In the past I've only done cardio trying to focus strictly on weight-loss. I've decided to not be a slave to the scale and simply want to feel better about my body. So in some of the texts I've read lately, they suggest strength training in combination with cardio with the theory being the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn day to day just maintaining your body. Sounds like good advice, so I thought I'd give it a try. I knew when I saw the workout the MHPT had designed for me that I'd be reducing the weights. Even when I was lifting a fair amount 15 years ago, I wasn't doing the weights it had set for me. For example, it wanted me to do 3 sets of 8 reps @ 180 lbs for the bench press. Well, that wasn't happening and I didn't even attempt it. So I lowered it to 115 lbs to start. The first set was very easy. The second and third were only slightly challenging. So I'll probably up the weight by 10 lbs or so the next time it pops up in my workout routine. I know I'm going to be sore tomorrow, but that's a good thing. Overall I enjoyed the workout and it did keep me entertained. My only issue (you knew there'd be one didn't you?) is that I have chronic shoulder pain in my right shoulder. It's an old swimming injury. I have "swimmers shoulder" in my right shoulder. Basically this is where the tendon that connects your collar bone to your upper arm bone "snaps" across the joint. It's mildly - quite painful when the joint gets inflamed. It started acting up a couple of weeks ago when I painted the ceiling in the kitchen and today I just gritted through the pain on a couple of exercises. Unfortunately there's nothing much they can do for it and I'm simply hoping that by strengthening the muscles around the joint, it will work itself out.I think Teri and I are going to head out this weekend and see if we can't find a bedroom set we find acceptable. We want a King size bed for our new place. We're also fountain shopping. We want a cool rock fountain for the front yard. We found one, but it's pretty pricey. So we're going to try to find something similar at a lower price. We'll see. I think we'll also try to finish loading the POD and have it taken away as well. It'll be nice to have the driveway back. As for the house, we had a bit of a flood the other day. See, once they get all the plumbing in, they pressurize the pipes and fill them with water. Then before they get too far on the house, they can tell if there are any leaks. There were. :-) It happens all the time, so it's no big deal. Unfortunately they didn't do this BEFORE the sheetrock went up so they had to replace a section of sheetrock in the family room. Better now than after we move in! So sheetrock is again delayed. Hopefully they'll be able to finish it up next week and get the inside painted. Hopefully. We also talked to Teri's step-dad, Fred. He's a dirt guy and has a dump truck. The builder is going to allow us to have some top soil delivered before he gets to framing the other houses around us. That will save us a LOT of wheelbarrowing dirt from the driveway to the back yard. We'll have 60 yards (that's 6 dump trucks full) delivered sometime next week. Then we can get started on the back yard right after moving in. I also priced sod and at $.30/square foot, our back lawn will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $500.00. So between soil and sod, we'll have about $1,300.00 into the back yard. WAY better than the $5,000+ the landscapers would have charged us to install it. Sure it'll be lots of labor, but how satisfying will it be? Awesome.
Anyway, have a good weekend.
Peace.
J