Gymboree

I've finally managed to get a pretty regular, three-times-a-week gym routine going. Mostly it involves thirty minutes on a treadmill, but sometimes (the times when I just can't bring myself to run and really just want to sit someplace quiet and read a book) I'll opt for the reclining bikes instead. Monday I cut the aerobics (bike & book) session short by a few minutes so I could spend some time with the weight machines, particularly the ab machines.

I've been avoiding the weight machines. That whole section of the gym is just scary to me. Fortunately I tend to go at a time of day when it's mostly populated by senior citizens and fellow "average" women who are just trying to get healthy, so at least I don't have to navigate through the hardcore scary-grunty people in muscle shirts and weight-lifting gloves. But there's still the fact that I'm not that familiar with weight machines, and so I had to walk through the maze of contraptions and study them, trying to figure out what each of them are for and generally giving off the very genuine impression that I have no idea what I'm doing. And that last part is never fun, no matter how used to it I should be by now.

But I finally found the ab machine, and figure out how it works, and got a pretty good stomach workout for my efforts, and that's a good thing. Lately I've been completely neglecting my stomach muscles--I don't think I've done a single crunch since we got back from our honeymoon--and my lower back is suffering for it. It's not like I want abs like Madonna or anything. I just want to be able to bend over and pick things up without my back giving out and dropping me to the floor in a howl of pain, where I lie whimpering and incapacitated for several minutes barking at my husband not to touch me. I don't think that's too much to ask.

Anyway. My main focus is still the running. When last I ran on Friday I was up to running 175 steps and walking 25 (you may recall that I started at 100/100). Next week I'm going to try running a solid third of a mile without any walking breaks, which for me will be a pretty big milestone. Or, I guess, third-mile-stone. But the point is, I'm still doing it, and I'm making progress, and even though my diet is currently crap and will probably remain so until January 2, 2007, I'm feeling pretty good and managing not to expand. If I keep it up, by next spring I might actually be able to go outside and run a whole mile.

I might be able to ride my bike by then, too, assuming I get it out of the garage and clean off the spider webs and mud dauber nests and put some air in the tires. I can fairly easily go for 10 miles on the stationary bike on a hilly setting, but of course there is a big, big difference between pushing through a "steep hill" resistance setting on a reclining bike and riding up an actual steep hill on an actual bycicle. Gravity is a much bitchier mistress than computerized resistance. But by spring, if all goes as planned, I'll be living in the city where the hills are lower and fewer, and where maybe my bike can actually serve as transportation and not just as a mobile exercise device. I can ride it on weekends to fetch myself lattes and books and knitting supplies. 'Twould be awesome. 'Twould be awesome just to live within bicycling distance to those things, but that's another post for another day, and if I keep going this route I'm going to end up spending my day looking up rental listings and daydreaming and getting no writing done at all. And so I'll just stop.