Gym workout and bike #13

A particularly enjoyable workout with M. this morning at the gym. It's funny, I cannot say I actually feel well rested--indeed, the words "mental and physical exhaustion" come to mind!--but I have just had four nights in a row of more-or-less adequate sleep (between six and eight hours, no disastrous either front-end or middle-of-the-night insomnia) and frankly I am just much better rested than usual, it makes a huge difference! I was sort of springily doing all the stuff, the time flew by.

I especially like the first round of stuff we started with--we are often doing something a bit like this--but today I felt I was really getting the most out of it: planks (side as well as front, 45-60 seconds depending on the variant--I like doing the front ones with feet on a medicine ball, that's exciting!), cobra with baby-sized weights, "quadruped" (on all fours, raising opposite-side arm and leg, with five-pound weight in hand and strapped to ankle), a rather evil kind of crunch that I am still finding quite challenging (fifteen with a bar, fifteen without--lie flat, legs raised straight out & never touching ground; bring up torso and legs together, legs coming so that calves are parallel to ground and femurs near-perpendicular), then 60 seconds running-in-place-with-high-knees. By the end of the third round of this you really are dripping with sweat and in love with life...

(I asked M. afterwards why I am still so pitiful at those crunches, he says they are just hard and he has trouble with them also! That was heartening, I was wondering why they had not become miraculously easy as certain other exercises seem to once one does them a certain number of times...)

Oh, and then I got a thing of great excellence, good fodder for the blog! The first version of the calendar M.'s been working on! Here's his Myspace (Plaisir is the stage name!)--it's up on that page (scroll down), only I am not sure the pictures are large and bright enough to be visible.

I think I will try and scan part of the poster--thinking of what I know of this blog's constituency, I will concentrate on pics with physique and dogs (but I guess it will not hurt to throw in a few beautiful half-naked girls, lots of people like those also)...

Bike #13, 30 mins., 400 mins. total. A nice round number--I wish I were doing real training-type workouts, it's not quite happening yet, but there is no doubt that I would not have been doing any bike stuff whatsoever this month if I had not undertaken this wretched 30 in 30 plan, so there you go...