Cramping My Style

Okay, I lied. I have one more fitness post for this week, mainly because of something that happened at the gym last night/this morning.

Normally, when I’m at the gym, or fitness center, at my apartment, I take advantage of 2 pieces of equipment: the treadmill, and the recumbent bike. There is also an elliptical machine, and a weight machine, but I’m intimidated by one and feel goofy on the other.

I’ll let you decide which is which. However, they are pretty interchangeable.

 First off, since it’s on the opposite corner of the complex, I’ve been driving over. While I feel weird about driving to the gym, it’s cold outside. If it wasn’t cold, I wouldn’t be using the fitness center. Needless to say, I was having this conversation in my head last night.

When I hit the gym, I’ll fill up my water bottle and put it on the treadmill I’m going to use, and then proceed to stretch for about 10 minutes. I think I’ve remembered most of my stretches from High School Track, so I do a decent job. Then, I sync my watch with the sensor, and get started. Yesterday, I did thirty minutes, with a mixture of brisk walking and a few minutes of jogging. I always get paranoid when I jog, though, because I can just see one of my knees popping out on the treadmill, and that will not end well since I’m the only one in there at midnight. Plus, despite the stretching and staying hydrated, my shins weren’t real happy with my uptick in physical activity, and were protesting rather loudly at about the 42 second mark. However, upon completion, I did what I thought was a fairly respectable 1.80 miles according to my Nike Plus watch and sensor, so I was feeling good.

After wiping off myself and the treadmill, I refilled my water and moved over to the bike. I made sure to stretch again before climbing on, but I guess it wasn’t enough because at about the 9:20 mark, I started getting cramps in my legs. Water wasn’t helping, and neither was slowing my pace, so I cut it at the 10 minute mark instead of going the whole 30. The next 20 minutes was spent stretching, wincing, and dealing with it before I got back into the Cardis and headed back to the apartment.

Was this event discouraging? Yes. Did this hurt? Yes. Did this put a dent in my goals? Nope. Am I going back tonight to do this again? Dang straight!

I should probably pick up some bananas, though.

Tony