The Right Balance

I caught the train to Gymea today to meet up with some friends for beer and pool at the local pub. It’s a nice enough pub, recently rebuilt after a fire. I’ve never been there before, but apparently it used to be fairly dodgy, though friendly. The place is still friendly now, with food the only thing which I thought wasn’t up to scratch. The nachos I ordered was watery, greasy, and with hardly any beans. That aside, it was a good afternoon. And perhaps in light of my new found interest in being healthy, I resisted the urge to stay on, coming back late this afternoon. Oh yes, the gym seems to be having an impact.

After Tuesday’s consultation, my instructor Michael had prepared a fairly extensive programme. He’s still keen for me to do weights, but acknowledged my desire just to do something before I start on activity I don’t like. So the program consists of walking, elipticals, riding a bike, some rowing and those terrible mat exercises.

Actually, the hardest part, by far, were the exercises on the mat where I had to do scrunches (or whatever they’re called). While my instructor, Michael was doing them with no perceptable effort, I was sweating like a pig within seconds. I also didn’t think much of the rowing machine, but I did enjoy the bike, and I did enjoy the walking machine.

Since I was being largely supervised on this occasion, I didn’t bother about taking my mp3 player, but I definitely will next time. Aside from checking out other people in the room, there’s not a lot to do when you’re on those machines. I mean, there’s the television, but the news was all about Shane Warne, so I didn’t find it all that interesting. Who knows, if I keep going at this time, I might end up a fan of the “Bold & The Beautiful”.

But more than just music or podcasts to keep my brain active, I think I need something to help mark out the time. It’s amazing how slow time can go when you’re on a walking machine. It’s incredible frustrating to look down at the timer and to see that what you thought was a five minute uphill walk was actually only ninety seconds.

So all in all, I did about 50 minutes worth of exercise which is more than I’ve done in a very long time. And boy did it show. I had a shower straight after. A cold one. It wasn’t until the water hit my body that I realised how much my body had warmed up. Sheesh.

And after a while back at work, I headed out to Fruits In Suits where I met some very nice people, ahead of catching up with Damien for dinner at an old favourite of ours, Tandoori Palace. As usual, the food was very good. So yeah, an hour of exercise followed by two-and-a-half hours of wine and food. That’s about the right balance, I reckon.