Boxercise in the park

This morning I jumped on the bike, pedalled on down to the park, did a boxercise session, then pedalled back home.

It sounds so easy, when I write it like that.

Riding to Lennox Gardens seemed to be much harder this morning. I think I have worn my poor legs out. Lifting my leg up over the saddle was a definite effort. Getting started seemed arduous. I got a few hundred metres before realising that I had forgotten to put my lights on. The darkness as I rode away from the main road was a dead giveaway. I made it a few more metres when I realised I'd forgotten to turn on my HRM. I headed off for the third time, telling myself that I was ridiculous.

I was finally in the swing of things when I realised I'd taken a wrong turn and had to back track. I wimped out on the hills, going up and going down. I stressed my way along the bike path and finally made it to the gardens. Considering that nothing serious had happened I don't know why I was feeling so stressed, so I'm putting it down to my body rebelling against the idea that it should be (a) on a bike in the first place, (b) out of bed and exercising before sunrise, and (c) everything else it doesn't particularly like in the universe.

I made it to the gardens with five minutes to spare, even with the unplanned detour and walking the hills. When I wasn't busy being stressed I quite enjoyed the bike ride and it's definitely getting easier. I like being out that early in the morning because there aren't many people around, which reduces the chance of me crashing into somebody. It also means that there are fewer potential witnesses for the silly accidents that I'm likely to have because I don't know how to ride my bike properly.

Oh, I sorted the changing gears problem. I didn't.

Seriously, I'm going to have to go somewhere safe and practise. I just didn't have time to practise AND get to the training session, so I decided to keep it simple this morning. Anyway, the bike I rode when I was a kid didn't have gears, and I managed just fine.

I absolutely love boxercise, so I was glad to see the gear out. We threw a lot of punches, did squats, lunges, pushups and starjumps, and generally had a good time. We were matched up with people about our height, which helped. I liked the way the session was run. The trainers kept an eye out for people with injuries and modified things accordingly. There are a couple of people there who aren't at the prolonged running stage, and they handled that really matter of factly, which was good to see.

I reminded Krissi that I'll be missing the next two sessions. Apparently I'm going to miss the long steady run, but I figure I can do that while I'm in Queensland. I'll also work on my pushups and plank.

The ride home was much better than the ride there, probably because I was warmed up and it was light. I was only stressing about running into pedestrians. When I'm crossing the road near a bike I never worry about the bike rider hitting me, but now that I'm such a novice in charge of the machine I worry about running into a pedestrian. Fortunately, the people who were crossing the road with me didn't seem at all concerned.

I walked across the main road near home because there were too many pedestrians for me to safely negotiate the crossing. Then I realised I could have ridden across in the bike lane. I looked at the lane and the traffic and thought that maybe the bike lane is just a step too far for me at the moment. It won't be long though.

I gave myself this evening off the gym. I had planned to do a weights session, so I might swap that for tomorrow morning's run. I'll see how I feel in the morning. I'm going to take the afternoon off tomorrow. This workplace seems to have an expectation that I won't come back to work after my goodbye lunch, so I'm going to take advantage of it to go shopping (I need bike stuff!) and I may hit the gym then too.

I've realised that I need a beanie to go under my bike helmet, and I need a windproof jacket, and I need longer leggings, and I want a pannier, and I want to know how fast I'm going and how far I've ridden. This exercise lark seems like an excellent reason to go shopping.

Oh, as for my blister. Phew, it went down. It doesn't need popping. I won't wear those shoes again before Sunday's run. Thanks for the advice people. I'll feel much better about popping the next one.

Sara, there is absolutely no need to be impressed by my pushups. I have managed to get up onto my toes, but I don't get much depth as yet. I'm definitely not at the "eat jellybeans off the floor" stage of pushup development, although I do see how that's an incentive. We had a fun way to get through the pushups today. We did 2 punches, 10 pushups, 4 punches, 8 pushups, etc until we were down to 2 pushups. Those last 2 pushups were really hard but the punches were great fun so it was like being rewarded for effort through the whole exercise.

I can see myself signing up for the next session Krissi and Brad run. It's great fun.