Giddy Up

04/28/2010

284.2 lbs

I feel a difference in my clothes.  I got all excited because I found these workout shorts I bought at the end of last year to sleep in.  I brought them with me to BFF's house over New Year's and totally left them in the suitcase.  I used that suitcase for the SAG Birthday Bash trip and found the shorts!  They totally fit differently too!  They don't "hug" my jiggle in the middle if you know what I mean.  I totally heart them.  I wore them Monday to workout at HHH class.  It was great.  I'm totally morphing into one of those gym people.  Isn't it great?

I got home last night and thought, "I need some sort of activity".  So, I changed and immediately went to Concierge Gym.  When I got there, it was inhabited by three guys and two girls.  Eh. I can do this.  I really prefer to be the only one there and then let people come in.  I always feel like all eyes are on me when I walk into a room involving fitness.  I mean, come on.  You know you look at who walks through the door and you know, no matter how small or fleeting it might be, there's always a quick assessment of the person.  Well, anyway.  I just hate walking in to a room with workout people.  So, I did it anyway.

I walk with great determination up to my fave elliptical machine and get ready/prepped to start on it.  I'm plugging in my earbuds to my Droid and set the Pandora station to my fave workout one "Rage Against The Machine"  You gotta get that station.  All you have to do is select Rage Against the Machine.  It plays some great stuff if it's what you're into...If you don't have Pandora, you should totally get it.  There's have an app for that on the Droid and for the iPhone. Or iPod Touch.

Ok, I have the music playing, I am getting on the machine and setting my pace, level, stride, and other settings (I run on Manual).  I usually hit about 68-73 strides per minute.  Sometimes it goes faster when Nine Inch Nails plays...but there's no telling when that'll come into rotation.  Now, you may not think that's very much, but for this JAFG it's a freakin sprint.  I usually do this for 20 minutes.  The last 2 minutes usually kill me.  Or make me think it's killing me anyway.  Once I'm done with that, I hit the circuit machines (or resistance or weights or whatever those toture devices are called) for 30 minutes.  That's my full workout when I'm not hitting HHH class.  Back to the music.  I am getting on the machine and I begin to increase my strides.  I am wearing my newly found shorts again (becuase I can).  The more I increase speed, the more these damn shorts are riding up between my always touching thighs.  I'd like to make this more glamorized, but there's nothing attractive about it. 

Concierge Gym is not the biggest area and the machines sit right up against the wall.  The mirrored wall.  So while I'm trying to pretend that I don't have some funky new triangle cut shorts on, I can see in the mirror exactly what I look like from the front.  And that's with the front of the elliptical in between me and the mirror.  Horror upon horrors.  Imagine what I must look like from the back!!!

So, I am casually reaching down and pulling my shorts out of the crevice of my thighs.  It's not the easiest thing to do while on this machine.  I am trying to adjust my stride, my speed, all sorts of things so these damn things don't ride up on me.  I'm no longer being subtle now.  I can't go the pace I want to go because I keep having to stop and adjust the shorts.  I know I'm gonna be some water cooler joke somewhere because I almost fell one time trying to rescue them from the thighs.  Finally, I got the pace down to 48-55 strides per minute and the feet positioned in the right place and was holding my head in the right position.  The riding stopped.  Yahoo!

So I'm a little disappointed with this slower pace.  It's not what I'm used to doing.  I figured that I would increase my level from the 5 I normally go to 14 which is as high as it would go.  I think, in the world of ellipticals, this would be knee-breaking, but my machine is super duper easy and even the level 14 doesn't kill me like the level 3 does on some other ones.  I love that machine, though.  I can do a quicker pace and really feel like I'm accomplishing something since my muscles don't feel like they are going to burn through my skin like acid the instant I get started.  This machine actually lets me move a little bit before that kicks in.

I decided to double my time from 20 to 40 minutes. I also decided to skip the weight machines since I was wearing the shorts.

One wardrobe malfunction was enough.




-jafg