Thursday gym

A good workout, though not quite according to plan - I got over there ten minutes early, as always, to warm up, and M. said he was running 5-10 minutes late. And just as we were about to get properly started at ten past, another lady turned up - really she was supposed to come at 11, but she had got the time wrong (and was quite late, if it had really been a 10am appt. - self-sabotage!).

I decided that in the interest of increasing the sum total of workout hours in the world, clearly she should take the appointment! So I did about 45 minutes on my own, it was very good, and then headed home to get on with the real-work part of the day.

It would have been the last of ten sessions that I'd prepaid a couple months ago, so I am not, actually, sorry to have saved it for later, because I think this will be the last one I have for a while. I still do not have details on the apartment situation, but it is almost certain that I will move before the end of the calendar year to an apartment that costs enough more than the one I'm in now that there is clear need for Triaspirational austerity measures. No more trainer sessions, and no more individual swimming lessons! I'll have my last one with I. this Saturday and tell her that I cannot squeeze in any more.

Both things have been, I think, a justifiable extravagance - working out with a trainer was a crucial part, for me, of making the transition from overweight unfit insane workaholic smoker to thoroughly triaspirational exercise fiend, and a once-a-week session is a very nice and easy (but expensive) way of staying on track. I think it will be clear to readers of this blog, though, that I am in fact capable of staying on track on my own! And the swimming lessons were essential last year, because in fact if you genuinely never learned and do not know the non-free strokes, there are pretty much no group/affordable ways to learn them properly - there are adult learn-to-swim classes that are for people who really can't swim at all, and there are freestyle classes (especially with the growing popularity of triathlon) where you can improve freestyle technique, but if you honestly do not know how to do breaststroke or butterfly or whatever and you want to learn, you almost have to go to the one-on-one teaching, which of course (this being NY) is wildly extravagant.

That said, a really wonderful swim teacher like I. (or Jim Bolster, who I had a couple amazing lessons with in the spring) is worth her weight in gold!

My goals for this week's lesson: some work on freestyle breathing and the back end of the freestyle pull; some work on the arm/pull of the butterfly, especially the back part of the pull and the arms flying back over to the front.