Personal Training with Krissi

I had an awesome PT session this morning. I don't know what it is, but sometimes I am just so strong when it's that time of the month. I was smoking hot!

After getting myself there without being too early (it's no fun sitting in the car when it's cold) or too late (I hate being late!) I climbed the two flights of stairs to Krissi's apartment. My knee was grumbling slightly on the stairs but didn't make any noise at all on the flat, which delighted me, particularly the day after Mt Ainslie. Mind you, I was puffing by the time I got to the second floor. I waited at Krissi's door, subtly catching my breath, and trying to look like I'd just arrived. I don't know if I fooled her at all, but I felt better pretending that I wasn't a beached whale.

The session started with the now fairly usual 10 mins warmup on the bike followed by 10 mins of intervals. I have the resistance at a higher level during the warm up, then it gets knocked back a couple of levels while I go fast for a minute, recover for a minute. The 21st minute is meant to be flat out, and Krissi had me changing my grip today. I had to admit to her (when will I learn? when will I learn?) that I found today's session easy, so she's going to crank it up a level next week. Sigh.

We then moved on to squats. I've been doing my squats with 40 kg on the bar, so that's where we started. It was easy, so we upped the ante to 45 kg for the next two sets. Usually I wobble all over the place getting used to an increase in weight, but I didn't wobble at all today. The last few reps were hard, I was panting and I was sweating, but my form was good. Yay me!

We followed this up with hamstring curls. Apparently my form was good, which is always nice to know, but I was finding them hard work. My hammies and glutes were a bit tight from yesterday's hill climb. I got through the three sets and Krissi had me straight over to chest presses. All I really wanted to do was lie there, flat on the floor, for the rest of the session.

Once I was on the bench though, I was into the chest presses. I did the first set without any trouble. I expected to, because we hadn't done any arm work the night before. On the second set the weirdest thing happened. I pretty much failed on the 8th rep, then did the 9th rep without any trouble at all. It's not at all what you expect to have happen. I struggled through the rest of the set making it to 12 with a mixture of assistance from Krissi and sheer determination. The third set followed pretty much the same pattern, although I didn't manage any reps on my own after I started needing help at 8.

Then it was abs work. Krissi has me doing these crunches, pushing a small pink ball up into the air (20) followed by oblique crunches, pushing the ball towards her hands while keeping my butt on the floor (20). They sound harmless but it's a good workout. I then did a lousy bridge. My form is much better but my abs were exhausted. Still, it's all progress. I staggered down the stairs, jumped into my little car and tootled off to work, feeling incredibly virtuous and amazingly strong all day.

I'm completely knackered now though. I'll be tucked up in bed in no time.