Saturday 1 December 2007

Personal Training and singing in the rain

I didn't update my blog last night for a very good reason. I was at the Elton John concert. My friend, Alex, rang me yesterday afternoon to offer me a free ticket to the concert. Not only that, but the seats she had were terrific. How lucky was that! There was one minor hiccup. It was an outdoor venue. Naturally the heavens chose last night to open on drought-stricken Canberra and it poured all through the concert. The rain didn't matter though as we really enjoyed ourselves. Elton was fantastic.

Back on topic, I had my weekly PT session with Krissi yesterday morning. I was running late so I jogged over to her place. It's such a good feeling to be able to just walk out the door and start running. The five minute jog was a good warmup for the session too.

We started out with 10 minutes on the dreaded bicycle. (Shhh. Krissi reads my blog so I'm going to start pretending I love the bike on the basis that personal trainers are guaranteed to stop giving you exercises you enjoy as soon as they realise you're having fun.) We were chatting about the triathlon training program during the warmup. Krissi is one of the volunteer cycle coaches, so she was able to tell me a little about what to expect at the training. I'm really looking forward to it. The first swim session is on Monday.

For the first time I did squats with a barbell. I've done them on the Smith machine before but it's quite different when you have to balance the bar yourself. I did the first set of 15 without the bar, but holding my hands up as though it was there, while Krissi checked my form. Then I did two sets with 10 kg on the bar and a third set with 15 kg. That's a total of 60 squats!

Interestingly, my left knee was tracking perfectly on the squats and my right knee wasn't. I think I've been focussing so much on my weaker leg that I've forgotten to think about the stronger one. At least I know that now.

Some of the other exercises that I did were triceps pulldowns and biceps curls. Oh, I did the hamstring curls as well. These are getting easier to do. Krissi gave me a good butt exercise to do. It involved lying against the wall to keep my body lined up. I could really feel it. In fact I can still feel the effects in a "I know I worked hard but it's not actually painful" kind of way.

I didn't run home from training. I didn't have the energy. :-)

5 comments:

LBTEPA said...

Thanks SO MUCH for your comment Kathy - it really means so much to me. I got all blinky when I read it, becuase that's why I want the Athena category to be widely known - so more and more women can have fun doing trithlons, no matter their size. I don't go to Transitions any more, for obvious reasons, but from the number of encouraging messages I have received from forum members I am sure those nasty people are the minority. When are you doing your tri?

Pam said...

I'm so impressed! Glad your mum is making good progress.

Kathy said...

Exciting news - Mum is on her way home from hospital! She looked so well when I saw her for myself yesterday. Dad and Janet went in to pick her up. I'm here on tenterhooks, dashing out to the door every time I think I hear the car.

The triathlon is the first weekend in February. Watch this space. :-)

Andrew(ajh) said...

Elton John concert - what a fantastic surprise! He is a real mega-star - I love his music!

Anonymous said...

It's great to hear that his concerts have been so good, he could easily have been so bad considering his famous temperament.

I must confess to a deep and abiding weakness for "Your Song"