Category Archives: Gym

Today the temperature is well above 90° and the heat index is over 100°. The poor dogs haven’t quite grasped the concept of their wading pool, so they drink from it instead of getting into it and sitting in the cool water. They mostly lie around in the dirt under the lilac bush, trying to bite the flies that swarm our neighborhood.

I want to go swimming in the worst way, so badly, in fact, that I am considering riding my bike to the HC to do a little swimming on the down-low in Dave and Alane’s pool. With my luck, I would get there and they will have decided not to fill it this year. I am sure they wouldn’t mind me swimming in it if they have filled it, so maybe next week I will lug one of my anthologies there and study after I swim.

I have attempted to start running again, hoping that I can continue this time. When I got so sick this winter, my lungs got a little angry with me, and they have only recently begun to feel strong enough to try to start up again. This first week has gone really well, and I think it helped that I have been walking so much. My goal is to combine walking and running to equal 3 to 5 miles every day. So far, I seem to have no problem doing that.

Tomorrow, I will get up at six to jog before the sun is really up. Hopefully, I will beat the humidity, too. It would be nice to be only mildly gross when I get home from exercising. This morning when I got finished mowing the lawn, my headband was moist, but when I got back from my bike ride, it was soaked. I could literally ring it out into the sink. Gross.

I am studying the Renaissance today. Maybe I can get friendly with Shakespeare.

I went to Irving Gym yesterday for a cross-training day. I rode the bike. I rode for half an hour on the most uncomfortable stationary exercise bike I have ever met. I generally ride a mountain bike, so the bike I rode was the touring bike from hell. Riding it was like riding to Florida on a unicycle with no seat. It was bad. Like this:

Not only was it uncomfortable, but it was fucking boring! Riding in one place for half an hour watching at the same muscle-bound frat boys lift weights incorrectly is not high on my list of “Top Ten Things to Do Before I Die”—right up there with watching skinny little girls reading fashion magazines, barely pedaling with their bikes set on a tension of two, and flirting with the frat boys.

Apparently, to watch yourself in the mirror while doing inclined sit-ups holding a medicine ball is the new wave of exercise coolness. I might make it into a game of peek-a-boo. (Up, look in the mirror:  I see you. Down, look serious and cool: Where’s Corby?) I am sure abdominal work like that would make me sea-sick. I would need a dimenhydrinate drip to make it through the workout.

There is a whole psychology to the gym. One that fucks me up a little every time I go there.

Possibly, I need a thorazine drip after leaving the gym.

I absolutely despise exercising indoors, unless I am swimming. Then I like being indoors, unless I can be in the ocean. I hate that I don’t have to work hard at all to break a sweat while riding the stationery bike or walking on a treadmill. Yesterday, I rode the hell out of that little stationary bike. I only got seven miles, a t-shirt neck sweat-ring the size of China, a further damaged hymen, and the inside track on undergraduate mating rituals.

The sad part of all of this is that it looks like I will get to go to the gym again today, since it is 10 below zero right now. At least the sun is shining. Maybe I will wait until this afternoon and attempt to jog outside. In the sun. By the river.