Day Seventy-One – A Seminar in Sadism

Wednesday’s Workouts:
• Yoga (1 hr)
• Bike Ride (18 miles, including an absolute bitch of a hill, 2 ½ hrs)
• 1-on-1 Session with a Sadist (1 hr)
• Massage
• Skipped the last workout

After a pretty good day on Tuesday (except for the miserable weigh-in results) I was looking forward to Wednesday, but alas, I did not repeat the previous night’s uninterrupted sleep. Ay yi yi! What will it take to get a solid night of sleep? Regardless, I had to put my best foot forward and start the day with yoga. I’m getting better at it, I’m happy to say. While my flexibility helps me get into most poses, I still don’t have enough strength in some areas to hold those poses or to pop up from one position to the next. But, I like doing it and will have to look for yoga classes when I’m travelling. Following this I had my one of my last remaining sessions with Karen, our nutritionist, who also teaches the yoga. One of the things that Karen does is help to prepare for life back in the real world when we have to plan our own meals, consider portion-sizes and labels, and tackle restaurant menus. Mom had sent the menu from my favorite Mexican restaurant in Danville, VA, so Karen and I went over that. This restaurant has this Fajita Quesadilla that is to die for and it’s huge. I HOPE that when we go there, I won’t be tempted to eat the whole thing…either I’ll get them to make a half-sized one or I’ll just have to take half of it home for another meal. And I’ll have to settle for one small margarita instead of the giant Texas margarita ;-) As I’ve mentioned I still have a lot more weight to lose so in order to get to that goal with about a 1-2 lb loss per week, assuming I’ll be doing a few hours of workouts during the week, I’ll need to stick to about an 1100 to 1200 calories per day diet. That’s what I’m on now and I don’t feel hungry except right after heavy workouts (like the swimming or long bike rides). I know that it will be difficult for me to count calories, but I won’t have any trouble with portion sizes or contents of the meal (i.e., ensuring that there’s a good carb, the right amount of protein, and a reasonable amount of fat). I’ve tried the “writing down everything you eat” method and that just doesn’t work for me. So, I will have to trust that I can eat responsibly. I will check labels on foods that I buy in the grocery store, though. I think that’s important, especially to ensure that it’s not full of a lot of words that no one can pronounce!

Next up I was scheduled for a bike ride “on my own.” This meant that I was not going with a group nor a trainer as usual and I had to push myself. That was good for me…I prefer it that way. However, as I was preparing to take off, Shelby, another camper, asked to join me, and that was OK with me. I don’t know Shelby that well, but I know she’s faster on the bike and I thought it would be a good way to pace myself – although I did warn her that I’m slow and she shouldn’t wait for me. As I hadn’t take the northern route in a while (since Amy was here three weeks ago) and I figured it was early enough that it wouldn’t be crowded with pedestrians, we went that way, and I had the goal of finally climbing the hill at the end of it. Yikes. From the gym to the end of the path before the hill is exactly 8 miles. We have to cross the main road and make the trek up a steadily inclining hill that I believe is about two miles long. OMIGAWD! I could barely go more than 3.5mph. It was torture. There is a traffic light at 9/10ths of a mile up the hill, and that was all I could do. Shelby had made it part of the way, but she had a time limit and had to turn around to get back to the gym. I had more time so I kept going to get to that traffic light. Geez, that was difficult! After drinking a lot of water, I crossed at the light to make the trip back down the hill. Now, you’d THINK that going downhill would be loads of fun, and perhaps for YOU it would be, but it scared me to death. I didn’t want to squeeze my bike brakes too much but I kept the speed to about 20mph. I didn’t like this at all. The only protection I’m wearing is a helmet. It’s warm and sunny on these rides so I wear bike shorts and a tank top. I’ve had a little bit of Bermuda road rash, AND I have an eight-inch scar on my knee from my solo scooter accident in November 2000, so I was apprehensive about being so vulnerable on this hard concrete. If you waivered even SLIGHTLY you could lose complete control and have a horrible wipeout. I know a few of you are regular cyclists; how do you do it? Rich, Claudette, Michael, Neva? It doesn’t scare you? I don’t want to do that again! I made it down safely and crossed to return to the bike path, but I still don’t want to do that downhill ride again. No way unh unh!

I returned to the gym after burning well over a thousand calories in time for a quick lunch and rest before working out with my sadist. Oh, sorry, I mean Nicola. Now, Nicola is very sweet and soft-spoken so you’d never know that she has a very evil, sadistic side that I’m pretty sure enjoys putting me through torturous exercises that she has concocted in her brain to make me scream. (Yes, Nicola, I’m talkin’ about YOU!). Ok, first we do the kettlebell warmup which involves holding a 15-lb kettlebell weight with two hands, swinging it between my legs while squatting, then swinging it up with my arms straight to about eye-level while I squeeze my butt and thigh muscles. Next Mistress Nicola hands me a 15-lb dumbbell to hold in one hand and let it descend down that side, stretching and then using the opposite oblique muscles to pull myself back up. Holy mackerel! You should have heard the noises I was making! Moans and groans and grunts – you know what that sounds like?!?! I had to do that on both sides, of course. We did two sets of those two exercises (usually we do five sets, so I think this was just the introductory sadism course). Then I had to hold a ball between my thighs, rise up on my toes, squat down to three levels, and then pulse up at down at the lowest level three times, doing all that ten times. THEN I had to hold a 10-lb exercise ball with straight arms in front of me, and squat down while lifting the ball over my head and squeezing my shoulder blades together. Well, the 18-mile bike ride I had just done did a number on my knees, so I didn’t squat so well, thus we concentrated on squeezing my back muscles. We did those two exercises twice. Let’s see…I think we moved to the mat next and I did crunches on the yoga ball. No problem…I like doing these. I’ve mentioned before that I can work my ab muscles more because I can stretch backwards before crunching up. Twenty of those. OK, maybe the class in sadism is over? NO! Now I had to do a full sit-up from the yoga ball, this time twisting my elbow, which I’m holding over my shoulder, to the opposite knee. Twenty of those. Yikes. Alright, I guess those weren’t the worst of it. The worst is still yet to come and I still haven’t told you everything. Next we did butterfly crunches – this is when you lie on your back, but the bottoms of your feet are touching and are close to your crotch, so your knees are spread wide apart. The point of butterfly crunches is that you engage your lower abdominal muscles more. I was doing the exercise properly, but as I still have a big belly there, I couldn’t feel the muscles “engaging.” So Nicola went to get a big round weight that is SUPPOSED to go on a bench press bar and puts it on my stomach and PRESSES DOWN with her own weight. Holy shit. But guess what…and this is what concerns me….I liked it. I liked it ‘cause I could feel my muscles working hard this time. See…I told you…it’s a seminar in sadism without the sex, except from all the grunts and moans I was making you’d think there was sex involved, too. I might be getting this next exercise out of order, but it doesn’t matter ‘cause the LAST exercise is the one that convinced me that Nicola is a sadist. I took this big wide rubber stretchy-band, put it on my foot, lied down on my side but propped up on my elbow, kept my hands on the mat in front of me, and did leg lifts. So NOW I need a fire extinguisher to put out the fire that is coming from my outer thigh! And we did three different versions of the leg lift and did it on both sides of course. Ow ow ow. Are we finished yet? NO. Next Nicola had me lie on my stomach, and clenching my butt and thigh muscles, lift my right leg with pointed toes, keeping my pelvic bones on the mat but lifting my thigh OFF the mat. And then after twenty of these on one leg, I had to hold my leg in the air!!! And do it on the other leg. Twice! And THEN…I had to lift both legs in the air (remember, I’m still flat on my stomach on the mat), and then click my heels together like I’m some low-budget Dorothy from Wizard of Owz (yes, I meant to spell it that way!). But the worst was yet to come. Mistress Nicola says, “we’re going to work on butt and thigh muscles now” – wait, haven’t we been doing that all along? What the heck is all that burning I’ve been feeling, hmmmmm? OK, she has me lie on my back with a yoga ball at my feet. I have to put my hands on the mat down my sides, and plant my heels into the ball. THEN she tells me to lift my butt as high as possible (are you insane?!) and THEN roll out the ball to extend my legs (you ARE insane!) and then roll the ball back to where my knees are bent but my butt is still up there, and do that ten times. And do it again! After letting out a giant groan, I announced loudly to anyone in the gym that could hear that “NICOLA GIBSON IS A SADOMASOCHIST!” And I’m afraid I’m turning into one, too…’cause I’m paying them to make me do more of this crazy shit! Mwaahahahahahaha.

Thank HEAVENS my massage was next. Nina worked her usual magic, and this time I dozed off. I normally don’t do that but I’m sure the lack of sleep and the exertion of my workouts wiped me out. I had hoped that the massage would be enough rest to be ready for the final workout of the day, but I could barely keep my eyes open even after the massage. So, I decided to listen to my body and give it a rest. You know…each time that I’ve had more than a 4-lb weight loss, I had taken a day off. I really can’t help but feel that I must give myself a day off to let my body recover and rejuvenate. So, I don’t feel guilty about skipping this final workout of the day, and I’m already planning on skipping Sunday’s 2-hr workout. I have to start packing anyway, so Sunday will be the best time to do that. I can burn a lot of calories packing; this I know for sure. I need to get some pieces of luggage packed for a luggage-shipping service which will cost less than paying for excess and overweight baggage with the airline; I have to schedule this to be collected before I leave, perhaps for Thursday or Friday of next week. Hmm, I better check out the email receipt from when I had stuff sent to me here in the beginning, so that I know what to do! I packed way too much stuff…there are workout pants and tshirts that I never wore And there are new things, too, as well as a few items that are too big. Woohoo!

Hope you all have a great Thursday…the weekend is almost here, yippee!