Personal training

This morning I had my regular personal training session, which was a real bonus as that 6 am appointment got me out of bed and to the gym. I've really struggled with motivation lately. My most spectacular crash and burn was getting dressed to go to the running course on Tuesday and then piking. I was standing by my bike, thinking about the hassle of getting out of my cycling gear before the run, and I just decided not to go.

At least it was a different story this morning. As usual, I was well rugged up. I felt a little like a Sara Lee pastry - layer upon layer upon layer. I headed out the door to find it wasn't as cold as I had thought it would be. The reason quickly became apparent. The fog was quite dramatic, adding a mysterious atmosphere to the walk down to the gym. Fortunately, there were other early risers out and about so it wasn't too spooky.

I was at the gym so early that I was turning on lights in the dressing room. That's a first for me. I removed all the layers and headed out to the weights room. After a warm up on the treadmill Leanne had me doing lunges. I had to lunge then jump to swap legs and lunge again. I don't think the lunges were up for much, but it was certainly a challenge. Then I was standing on one leg and kicking sideways with the other. I repeated the two exercises and then I was more than happy to swap over to upper body.

Leanne set me up on the Smith machine doing chest presses with a difference. After lifting the weight I had to push it up, let go and then catch it on the way back down. It looked easy, but the catch really had my arms working. I can feel the effects now. Straight after the chest press I was doing pushups. They were hard work. Leanne then set up a series of four barbells and had me do a body pump move - a clean and jerk followed by a row, four sets of twenty with the weight increasing each time. The first three sets were easy, but the fourth started to test me.

We moved on to abs work. My abs are much stronger and so when we got to the plank, Leanne wanted me to try it with one leg in the air. I was able to do it, which was pretty cool, but I wasn't able to just swap legs in the middle of the time period. I had to reset. A bit of stretching afterwards, and I was heading home. It seemed a lot chillier on the way home, so I was glad I'd brought all those layers with me.

I've had more visitors from Melbourne this week. My sister brought my Irish cousin and my niece along to visit me. It was great to see them. The only downside was that they arrived when I would normally have been going to yoga. I didn't think it would be too polite to dash off to the gym so I heroically sacrificed my yoga session and took them to dinner instead. They went home this morning after breakfast.

I've been doing some serious thinking about my running. I realised I've been thinking that I've lost my running mojo, which is a pretty negative mindset. I've been building up my next run into something really difficult. At least I've woken up to what was going on. I'm going to aim to stop myself when I start thinking that way, and tell myself that I'm looking forward to my next run. I'm also going to start out small and just get myself out there.

I'll keep you posted.