Yogalicious! – Monday 4/27/2009

The omelet kit I brought to work with me for lunch today. Farm fresh free range eggs from Acton, CA . As close as it gets without having chicken feathers all over the back yard.

Yes, you can make an omelet of sorts in the microwave. I sliced and cooked the mushrooms for a couple of minutes, then added the tomatoes for 30 seconds. Cooked the eggs in a separate (oiled) bowl. Put the sugar snap peas on top of the cooked eggs and poured the hot mushroom/tomato mix over them to heat them a little.

Yum. Really.

OneL thought I might like to put these cheese chicks crackers on my blog. She was right!

But mostly, I wanted to tell you that I finally got back to the gym after almost a month’s absence. The first three weeks were due to a bout of bronchitis that left me coughing after I even walked fast. Then the last week was just procrastination and the fact that I had to renew my gym membership (which I got a great deal on through Costco).

But anyway, last night I went for a yoga class and it was fabulous. Of course I am not as limber as I was a month ago–and honestly, I am a bit flexibility-challenged at best–but it was terrific. I seriously became blissed out by the end of the class.

I wish I could get to yoga more often. It’s a complete treat. I could feel the vertebrae in my upper back easing apart in the most necessary way.

I returned a block to the teacher after class and told her it was wonderful and that I was a little loopy. I really was. Just euphoric. She put her hands up in a sort of double-high-five gesture, and then almost knocked me over with her gentle palm-slap. I guess I really was floating.

Spinning Out of Control – Friday 3/13/2009

I keep track of my workouts in my calendar and online. This week was going well till Friday.

Mon : 20 min + 15 min brisk walk

Tue : 35 min cardio/elliptical

Wed : 60 min spinning class + 15 min warm-up + 80 crunches – This spinning class was great! The instructor was fun. She mixed up a lot of basic moves into sprints and rests of different lengths. At the end she let us do whatever we wanted for a couple of minutes and I really pounded it. It was amazing and I hit the zone and felt great for 24 hours.

Thu : worked late to help a coworker and didn’t make it to a class I was hoping to take

Fri : 65 min spinning class + 15 min warm up + 80 crunches
—This class was off from the beginning. Didn’t like the instructor at all. She sauntered in late, adjusted my bike to a position that gave me a couple of pinched nerves in my back (I’m realizing by Sunday morning), and basically let us follow along to her personal workout. She had zero body fat, and didn’t do what most instructors do,which is remind you to work at your 6 or 8 or whatever you’re going for.

She’d just have us go full tilt for the length of a whole song. BORING, plus anaerobic and not good for those of us who are carrying some extra weight.

One young woman who was new was probably 50 pounds over weight. The instructor cranked my bike’s resistance up and I saw her do the same to the other woman. Dangerous.

She does not know who I am. Doesn’t know what issues I might have. I left feeling sick and was still blotchy in the face an hour later. I should probably complain to the gym. She’s teaching at least 2 classes a week and she’s lazy about the teaching part. (rant rant)

Lesson learned: I know my limits and I know when I am really working hard, and no one cranks my bike up but me.

The Night the Inmates Took Over the Asylum – Thursday 9/4/2008

It started out to be a day like any other. I wrote at the diner. I worked. Had lunch at my desk. Worked some more. Drove to the gym and had my hand stamped to secure a place in the Spinning class.

I’ve take Spinning with two different instructors and I like the more aerobics-like one best. The road bikers seem to disdain this one a bit. They prefer the one where you are practicing skills that will get you past other bikers in a pack or up a big loooong hill.

Not going up big loooong hills is kind of the reason I come to a spinning class rather than hit the Angeles Forest Highway for my work out. That and the air conditioning.

Oh, yeah. And the music.

Anyway, a bunch of us are waiting and waiting. The door to the bike room usually opens about ten minutes before the class so we can get in and warm up a bit. At 5 o’clock one of the other waiters goes and asks to have the door opened.

The manager, who looks so much like a Looney Tunes caricature of a body builder that the appropriate music plays in my head every time I see him, comes over and obliges. The instructor is running late.

About 10 people file into a small room with a couple of dozen stationary bikes in it. Blue lights hang from the ceiling. The room is kept darkish, like a nightclub. Three sides of the room are glass. One opens to the rest of the gym, where people work out in bright circumstances. The other two are overlaid with black and white photos of Lance Armstrong riding in the Tour de France. His yellow clothes and helmet are the only color in the images. The Eiffel Tower is over my right shoulder.

After about 5 minutes, one of the people in the class says she doesn’t teach here, but she does teach spin and she’d be willing to run the class. We all encourage her. When she says she doesn’t have any music, but we could sing, we laugh. The fit and committed looking rider next to me says she has a copy of the instructor’s music in her car…she uses it to run to.

So a few minutes later we’re off! The woman leads us in a really challenging class for the remaining 50 minutes.

At one point the manager comes by and does a cartoonish little double take when he sees the gym member on the lead bike, which faces the rest of us from the front of the room. But he has the good sense not to make her stop. Better to have a room full of satisfied members than cave to the insurance policy.

At the end of the class, we all applauded the leader and the woman who had the music. It felt great that we didn’t just blow off the work out or scatter to the elliptical machines in disappointment.

I might just be hooked on the Spinning. It really encourages you to take charge of your workout and challenge yourself.

My Foot at the Gym – Wednesday 8/20/2008

Had a kind of wretched day at work. It lasted from 6:00 a.m. to 4 p.m. I took a script with me to read over a stress-eating lunch which included the dreaded french fry. (Okay, french fries.)

A fairly new client–who is not completely educated in what we do here–yelled at me over the phone, questioning our methods, our charges and by extension my integrity. It was highly unusual. I stood my ground, but it was no fun.

On the way home I stopped at the gym, thinking I’d just do the minimum. Maybe 20 minutes on the elliptical or some weight machines.

But there was a spinning class starting shortly after I arrived. Usually I’m in and out of the gym by the time it starts at 5:15. I tried spinning when it first came out in 1847 or thereabouts, when I was working at UCLA and using the gym there and I didn’t like it much. I figured I could do part of the class here and feel okay about leaving early.

Wow, the class was aMAZing. Dimmed lights, good music, and a really responsive bunch of fellow spinners. Halfway through the hour-long class I thought I couldn’t do any more. But, as I sometimes do with the elliptical machine, I thought I’d just try for another five minutes.

I hit a zone! It was incredible. Lovely endorphins washed away everything. I did the whole class and felt really proud. I didn’t think I could really hack 60 minutes at that activity level, but it was great.

I stopped for Thai carryout along the way and didn’t get home till 7:30 (15 hours after leaving home and about 1 1/2 hours before bedtime) but to quote Bill Murray in Meatballs, “It just doesn’t matter.”

Yay, gym!

"Aren’t You Staying for the Next Class?" – Thursday 6/3/2008

Hahahahahahaha! That’s the funniest thing anyone’s said to me in weeks!

You must understand that this question was asked just seconds after the Pilates Plus instructor stopped hurting me… or, I should say, stopped encouraging me to hurt myself.

Yikes. My legs were wobbly and I was still regaining my breath after the last set of show-stopping moves that had me trying to maintain my body in a vee (with my bum the only part of me connected to the earth) while flailing my arms and legs up and tucking them in.

I’m pretty sure that “flailing” is not intended to be a part of the Pilates vocabulary, but it’s honestly the best I can do right now. I could tell that the yoga and strength exercises I’ve done since the last time I ventured out to the Pilates class had helped. And yet.

When the nice lady from the mat next to mine inquired whether I’d be staying for the 24 S.E.T. class, which is 60 minutes of synchronized weight lifting, a chuckle was about all I could muster.

She was older than me, and heavier than me, and she’d had some trouble with some of the Pilates moves, as I had. But I admired the way she modified and she told me I’d done really well. She said the weight class is really good, I should try it.

I will. Just not right after the Pilates class. Not quite yet, no. Thank you so much for asking.

Talkin’ ‘Bout My Gym – Thursday 5/29/2008

Okay, can I gush about my gym for a minute? This is the branch of 24 Hour Fitness in Santa Clarita, which is the one I visit the most. It has a nice mix of features. So far I’m using the cardio machines and some of the weight machines the most. I’ve also been to the Lancaster, Hollywood, and Palmdale West branches. I like this one the best, but I love that I can use the other locations when they are handy or offer a class that I want to try.

It’s about half-way between work and home, and past the two major snarls on my commute–where the 170 meets the 5 and where the 14 peels away from the 5–so I stop there on weeknights.

I bought their package of 5 25-minute personal trainer sessions for $149 and I’m really glad I did. Did I tell you that my trainer is from Indiana and that I rode the school bus with her uncle? How weird is that?

So, anyway, having her lead me around the gym over the past 4 weeks has been really helpful. I feel I have permission to use areas and to move the movable equipment (like mats, balance balls, etc.) around the facility in ways I’m sure I would have felt timid about.

I have one more session with her and then I’m going to use the gym on my own. I will probably hire her again in a few months to help me up my levels if I need to or if my enthusiasm has started to wane.

I haven’t lost a lot of weight, but my trainer and my doctor both predicted that given my body type I’d put on muscle easily. It’s those European plow-following, sheep-toting genes, I tell you. My mom’s been active all her life with gardening, yard-work, walking and now line dancing. My dad was a big jock–basketball and Golden Gloves boxing (he was a regional champ!)–so I’m going to try to think of myself as an old athlete myself.

Oddly enough, I realized when I received my membership card that I had signed up not only on the same day that my commitment to Taking the Reins ended, but also on the anniversary of my father’s death at age 62 of a heart attack (April 17, 1990.) Dang, that sounds younger every year. I can’t believe how much he’s missed…like just last week a new great-granddaughter.

I have this fear of my own heart that I am trying to overcome.

I’ve exercised more and less throughout my life, but I’m seeing that after just a few weeks my body is responding. I feel stronger and more emotionally satisfied, too.

Yay, me!

Unlocking the Power – Monday 4/28/2008

Met with my personal trainer. (I signed up for 5 half-hour sessions.) Coincidentally, she’s also a transplanted Hoosier. She took measurements and we set goals, and she’ll get me set up with a program that should carry me through a few months, I expect.

I’m very much enjoying the gym experience. Feels great to up the exertion.

Going Hollywood – Wednesday 4/23/2008

On my way over to Braveheart’s for a rescheduled writing group meeting I stopped off at the Hollywood branch of 24-Hour Fitness. I’m really impressed with the friendliness of the staff at all three of the branches I’ve visited.

If you look really closely, you can see the Hollywood sign above the upper window divider. This was my view from my spot in the row of elliptical machines.

That dome lurking outside the windows is the once mighty Cinerama Dome.

I went with a friend to see the very first matinee showing of Star Trek IV : The Voyage Home. We sat on the sidewalk for about an hour and a half playing eucre with a couple of former mid-westerners who were in line ahead of us. It was a good day.

According to Wikipedia, “In 2002 after a two-year closure, the Cinerama Dome was reopened as a part of a 14-screen complex called ArcLight Cinemas, a division of Pacific Theatres. The dome remains essentially unchanged though there have been improvements, notably in the acoustics. But for the first time ever, the Cinerama Dome began showing movies in the three-projector format. It is one of only three such theaters in the world today.”

Being a newbie to these rooms full of running, pedaling, panting humans, I still get this sense of being in a scene from Brave New World or something. Wouldn’t my turn-of-the 19th Century great grandparents have found the idea of a bunch of people using machines to work their bodies science fiction-esque?

Another view of the Cinerama Dome from the parking lot.

Now, this is my kind of development. Take what was once a big empty parking lot and build into an already-bustling part of the world not only more parking, but more space for businesses. Good thinking!