Ugghhh... missed a couple of days of exercise. I need to get back on track before I get off track!!

April 25: too tired!
April 26: was going to go after my second job but just exhausted.

April 27: 90 minutes Bikram Yoga

Totals:
21 days
1808 minutes

Thursday, April 28:

60 minutes elliptical, resistance at eight, half backward
60 minutes Pilates class

Back home, back at my gym, with its gorgeous relatively new & immaculately maintained equipment. There is **such a difference** between a gym that's financially profitable & with a growing membership, and a gym that's barely hanging on, and has very little to sink back into the equipment & facility. Particularly when the latter is in a more sparsely populated area where fewer people work out & those who do aren't willing (or more likely, able) to pay very much for doing so.

April 28: 45 minutes Hip Hop class. It was an hour class but I had a commitment so I worked my a$$ off and left after 45 minutes. Unfortunately I must have twisted my blasted ankle somehow and it is very sore, stiff and swollen now. I'm hoping it settles down (with some Aleve to help) and I'm thinking Bikram might be my best option tonight (over running or the like). I'm picking up the puppy tomorrow (at least 10 hours in the car) so exercise seems unlikely tomorrow.

Totals:
22 days
1853 minutes

Friday, April 29:

15:06 rowing on the Concept 2 for 3,055 meters at 2:31 for 500 meters, 41 s/m, for a projected total of 6,014.
60 minutes weights
20 minutes elliptical, all backward, set intervals at six and 10
60 minute yoga class

This is the problem with rowing (TMI warning ... TMI coming ...): Often, I skin my butt while doing it. What I mean is, I rub it raw & actually have blood spots in my underwear afterward. It's the equivalent of a runner getting a blister. I'll be in the middle of exerting myself & I can feel a crisis with my underwear riding up. But since I'm well into it, I don't want to stop & besides, I've never enjoyed watching people publicly extricating themselves from a wedgie, and that's what I'd have to do. So, being a masochist, I keep going. But my time suffers from the discomfort as that makes me not go all out & rather just wish for my 15 minutes to be over with.

Today, I feel guilty for not doing 45 minutes of cardio on the elliptical & instead settling for 20 minutes. But I wanted to take the Friday yoga class, which I usually can't make because I'm working then, And I'm still trying to hold to my resolution not to add more, but rather to swap out, since 2 hours daily in the gym is enough & I cannot continually add on other things. That way lies madness. Oh, and yoga was great. But I am not very flexible. And when we're in the warrior poses & our hips are squared to the mirror, I can't believe how much junk is packed in my trunk. Yoga has a way of making me feel really chunky, rather than long, lean & streamlined.

Saef-- have you tried multiple (at least 2) pairs of underwear? When I first started spin classes, I wore two pairs to try to keep my bum a little more padded. Or would that make it worse?!?!

Saef - what about a different style of knickers? We are talking about the need for technical underwear here. You wouldn't row in the Oxford and Cambridge boat race wearing a thong. So I suggest full coverage and up to the waist, and/or made out of "wicking" fabric. But whatever you do, you can't carry on like this. Don't be a masochist. Care for yourself. You're lovely.

Saef, have you considered bike shorts or tri shorts? They usually have a chamois pad to reduce chafing and are intended to be worn without underwear.

Something must be wrong. Unless someone is being pursued by a pod of great white sharks, it makes no sense to row until their butt bleeds...

Jay

Oh, dear. I am doing it again, aren't I? I ought to recognize this behavior in myself by now. There is pushing oneself & powering on through & not being a wimp, and then there's performing acts of self-punishment rather than self-care.

I can see it in myself when I'm feeling that I ought to exercise even more -- but then I stop myself from doing it -- but couldn't see it in this behavior, which I thought was just like a runner keeping going despite feeling a blister forming.

I am still working on this self-care thing. Someone had a brilliant post about this in Chicks in Control, about understanding it's about self-care rather than always being about steely will. I wrote a post agreeing with that observation. But it seems I slip up in practicing what I really do know to be true.

I guess I don't really need underwear beneath my workout capri pant & long pants. I must wear them from some kind of reflexive modesty.

(And Birchie, I love the word "knickers." I picture a naughty Edwardian lady in knee-length cotton battiste drawers with all kinds of lace trim.)

We're working on a Need to Know basis here, I think.

And we may not Need to Know. But I don't like the idea of commando style fast rowing unless you're in training for a quick night-time run up a river to sabotage something behind enemy lines. You did mention something over the winter that's at the back of my mind and making me wonder.

However, turning back to the subject under discussion, I see knickers as protective as well as an item of modesty. They certainly protect one's private parts from seams. Could be ooh ouch ooh otherwise.

Jessica's suggestion of wearing my bike shorts while rowing was a very good one, I think. (I own five pairs because I take spin class four days each week.)

Saturday, April 29:

45 minute spin class
60 minutes Pilates


Spin class is feeling like boot camp on a bike, as the gym's director (who is also one of the spin instructors) has incorporated three weight intervals in each class & is having us do an additional move, a kind of squat in which we lower ourselves back & touch the seat, then come up again. You keep your weight in your feet rather than in your upper body, so I think it's more of a squat than a push up. We do 16 of those at a time.

Anyway, between that & endless leg lifts in Pilates, I'm wiped out today. I'm making ham & bean soup with leftover Easter ham & watching the re-run royal wedding. The TLC commentators are idiotic. It's like the Kardashians are marrying into the Trumps.

April 29: 90 minutes Bikram Yoga

April 30: none (10 hours in the car to pick up puppy!!)

Totals for April:
23 days
1943 minutes