Bike #2 and gym workout

You know, it is most curious, because really I did the exact same thirty minutes on the bike this morning that I did yesterday, only somehow it was much more enjoyable today! Perhaps because I had eaten breakfast first--or maybe because I did some hard minute-long effort bits in the middle that were rather lovely (hmmm, I like how you can get your HR to spike up so quickly, this is convenient--running is not really so much like that, at least at the level I'm at--swimming is, but in a different way--but there is something very pure about the way it works on a bike).

The siren song of e-mail diverted me briefly from what should have been a rather more seamless transition out the door to the gym (I was having an all-round more complicated morning than usual--I had to bring clothes & stuff to shower at the gym, which I never do, because I had split-second timing to make it to midtown for a 10am rehearsal), but basically this will work...

A good workout with M. Just solid, nothing insane, though we did have a stimulating little bit at the end where I thought we were done and then we had some unexpected and rather pleasant little final stuff!

I confessed to him that I just cannot shake the idea of having my winter fitness goal being to work towards being able to do 3-4 unassisted pullups. We have had this conversation before, he is always skeptical, but I think I have persuaded him that it really is worth doing.

ED. Just to clarify--not skeptical about whether I can do it, in fact he is more confident than I that I can--just skeptical about whether it's a good idea!

There just isn't that much gym stuff that really has much sway over my imagination. I can get excited about pushups in miscellaneous variants (I am thinking about doing a lot of 'em with that alternating dumbbell row kind of thing on the sides, and ones with only one foot on the ground, etc. etc.), and planks and ab stuff of various kinds; and I can get excited about the notion of the unassisted pullup. I enjoy the other stuff, but it doesn't strike me mentally one way or another, I don't care how much weight I'm lifting!

It is not so much really that M. thinks I shouldn't do it as that he does have an idea of the proportional female physique that does not involve excessive back muscles--I'm not saying he's wrong--in fact the reason we first were talking about it was last January in the very particular circumstance where my awful stress fracture had insanely limited what I could do. Basically there were about six weeks where the only, only thing I could do at all was 3xweek workout with him, it was about the only thing that kept me sane, but we couldn't do any lower-body stuff and even a lot of core work was ruled out because of too many hip-area muscles involved. So basically we did strict upper-body and limited core stuff for 4-5 weeks and it was fairly amazing how muscley I got, I kind of never saw such a thing... He was alarmed, it was pretty funny! We stopped doing several things for a while precisely because of this question of back muscles!

However if we are doing full-body workouts and I'm doing a lot of cardio it will probably not be so noticeable. Not to mention I cannot really see my own back muscles anyway so there is little potential for me to be aesthetically offended! These body-builders just do not have a really sport-centered focus, their priorities are different--he's a great trainer for me to work with, he's incredibly fit himself and has very high standards, I really enjoy working out with him, but he's not knowledgeable about endurance sports and every now and again something like this reminds me that really he and I care about somewhat different things...

Bike #2, 30 mins., total 60 mins.