Monday
October 17, 2011
mr P and I had a very nice sunday afternoon chilling at, of all places, Boat Quay. We’re both on a bit of an austerity drive at the moment so I was looking for somewhere we can have lunch which wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg. The day before, I found out that Penny Black has a weekend 1 for 1 special on all food at lunch time with Citibank. I figured this was great because we could then stay on to catch the Australia-New Zealand semifinal in the arvo.
And things went pretty much according to plan. We had a very nice lunch of lamb stew and roast beef. I never knew this before but Penny Black has quite an impressive spread of mains and sandwiches. And it was good.
Even at normal prices, I thought $14++ for the lamb stew and $16++ for mr P’s roast beef was exceedingly reasonable.
And a rare bonus these days — the place wasn’t crowded. We sat outside facing the river, watching the crowds ambling along on the opposite bank at the Asians Civilisation Museum. It was actually pretty hot out but with iced tea and beer we didn’t go wrong.
By about 3pm the entire stretch of the quay started filling up with fans and there was definitely a party atmosphere palpable in the air. Quite a few showed up in the smart All Blacks kit and there were a few brave souls who turned up in the ubiquitous yellow of the the Wallabies. For some reason Penny Black’s telecast of the game via ESPN was about 10 seconds behind whichever channel Harry’s next door had subscribed to. So fans next door started cheering each time a penalty was awarded, or the ball was given away or when New Zealand’s Nonu scored the first try, completely wiping any suspense of the game. Pretty funny but still… Anyway the kiwis were in their usual top form and Australia just couldn’t keep up. Pretty good score in the end. Looking forward to them demolishing les bleus next week!
Monday
September 26, 2011
I’ve sort of stumbled into doing the Insanity workout. I had the videos on my mac for a while but just hadn’t gotten round to doing them.
Last week I’d been out with yenhan to Osteria Mozza and ate a crapload of bad carbs for dinner — dessert really is the killer. Come Thursday, despite all my best intentions I failed to get out of bed at the opportune time to make it to PT (I blame it on the rain that morning) so I decided some last minute remedial action was in order.
I skipped the fit test and went straight into day 2, which was ‘Plyometric Cardio Circuit’. I vaguely knew what plyometrics were and in my mind I just had visions of burpees, jumping jacks, maybe some compound push ups off a step board.
It started off with a brisk warm up of various high impact moves — jogging, Heisman’s, jumping jacks, mummy kicks, butt kicks, high knees — and I wanted to quit halfway through. This was the warm up.
After about 5 minutes of stretching after that, it swung full on into the insane part. This lasted about 20 minutes but I had to stop more than a few times, despite the 30 second water breaks in between. Each round consisted of suicide drills, power squats, mountain climbers, ski moves; and got increasingly faster with each round. If you don’t know what these exercises are and want to google, trust me, they’re as deadly as the names suggest. Try doing them non stop for 20 to 30 seconds each. There were a couple more rounds with other moves called switch kicks. Throughout the video Shaun T stresses not to sacrifice form — kicking high when necessary and more often than not engaging the core. But when you just want to collapse it is very hard to maintain proper form.
After my shower I struggled to pull on my pants because my legs were just so tired.
The next day’s workout was called Cardio Power and Resistance and things were worse mainly because I found that my calf muscles were completely destroyed from day 1 — not used to jumping much. cardio wise, I felt it wasn’t as intensive as the plyos but this had a fair amount of shoulder and tricep work, which i loved. Again, brought me near the brink of collapse.
So I was very glad when day 3 (or 4, since the fit test is considered day 1) was a recovery session — mostly yoga-style deep stretches. Frankly I wasn’t up for high impact jumping when my calves seemed to be as sore as ever.
Last night was the worst. Pure Cardio was on the sked and just the title alone should scare people. Because there were no. designated. breaks. at. all. The moves were similar to the plyo workout but they just came one after the other. I succumbed and took NUMEROUS breaks but took some comfort from the fact that the very fit people accompanying Shaun T in the video were stopping for breaks too. By the last two moves — I had no idea what I was doing. The last was push up jacks and I basically just keeled over on the floor thinking, kill me now.
But the good thing about it is boy do the endorphins kick in strong afterwards. They put me in such a good mood so I’ve been going to bed tired but content.
Tonight is another round of plyos, which actually refers to training the muscles by first stretching them, then contracting them to increase speed and power.
Fingers crossed that I won’t fall off the wagon on this one.
Friday
September 23, 2011
So there’s only another quarter left to the year, once again time to take stock. I haven’t been updating here as often as before because things have been humming along quite well. Also, as friends will attest, fb and I seem to have hit it off quite well.
Anyway two months in and mr P and I have slipped into something that’s very comfortable, routine even. In fact it got so comfortable so quickly that I had fleeting worries. But no use worrying about tomorrow. That’s what we have in common – being zen about what this is, what it might be. So that’s partly why it all feels very grown-up and unfussy. But I tell myself, this is it, a do over. All the lessons that I’ve learnt in the last two years, now is the time to put them into practice, and more importantly make them stick.
i’ve always believed that certain things happen for reasons we can’t fathom until much later. similarly people will drift in and out of our lives in a manner we cannot control. all we can do is just hang on for the ride, don’t hold on too tight, and scream when things get scary.
