The wife and I… Well OK, just the wife.. but the first way sounded better. This doesn’t make any sense. Let’s start over.
My wife was going over the bills and stuff. She discovered that our Citibank Card had like a gazillion ‘Thank You’ points on it. With our points we ‘purchased’ a waffle iron, a quesadilla maker, a toaster oven/toaster combo, a movie and an iPod shuffle. Not too shabby.
Even though I already have the 30 gig iPod, I am psyched about the Shuffle. It is perfect for the gym. The best part of all… we ordered this stuff on Thursday and the Waffle Iron and the Shuffle showed up today.
I had been considering skipping the gym today, I feel run down. I mean really run down. But I decided that I wanted the Shuffle for the gym, so I owed it to myself to give it a real test drive.
After synching the Shuffle, I headed over to the ole gym and stepped up on the treadmill. I turned on the Shuffle and it worked like a champ. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for me. Not surprisingly, I wasn’t able to run for shit. I was winded, tired and my knee was swollen. I was off the treadmill after walking just five minutes and running less than three.
I figured the whole thing didn’t need to be a loss, so I headed over to the machines to lift. I sat down at the chest press machine. When I lift (no free weights for me… just the machines…) I lift till failure. In other words, I try to lift 3 set of 15 reps at a given weight, but I full expect to fail at some point. If I actually complete all 3 sets, I know that I need to increase my weight for next week. Last week, I had nearly completed all three sets, so this week I increased my weight. I knocked out the first fifteen with out any real trouble. I drank some water and after a short rest started the second set. Normally, the first week I am at a new weight, I don’t get far on my second and third sets, but this week I was doing great.
10, 11, 12, 13. Just one more. I pushed. It didn’t want to go. I closed my eyes and exhaled all the air from lungs as I pushed hard. It started to budge and then slowly I was able to extend my arms for that full 14th rep. As I let the hand grips fall back into the rest position, I realized that I was holding breath. I inhaled deeply.
The back of my skull erupted into pain. I drank some of my water, but the pain was unrelenting. The hell with the third set, I thought. I went to the water fountain and refilled my water. I went to try a few sets of flies on the ‘pec-deck,’ but my head was screaming and I felt weak as shit.
I decided to cut my losses and head home. After I ate, the headache started to fade and I began to get some strength back. But honestly, that scared the fuck out of me.
The Blogathon is on Saturday.
I’ll be up for 24 hours, posting a new original blog post every 30 minutes during that time. I’m doing this to raise money for Freedom from Hunger. They are a great charity and I’ll be telling you more about them as the blogathon gets closer.
You can help. You can sponsor me. No donation is too small. And to encourage you a bit, I’m not only investing my time into this, I’ll put my money where my mouth is. I’ll match 10% of the total pledges. In other words, If I raise $500 dollars, I’ll add $50 of my own cash to the total. If the total would get to $1000 (if only we could do so well…) I’d contribute $100.
But wait… there’s more!
To entertain myself during this blogathon, I’ll be listening to music the whole time. I’ll share what I’m listening to (and perhaps even entertain requests) on Mango Radio during the most (if not all) of the blogathon. Maybe I’ll even rant a little. Jeckles on no sleep and loaded with caffeine… I’ll probably rant a lot.
Do your part! Sponsor me.
Or I may do something drastic!