Back On The Trainer

It has been so long since I mentioned (and more importantly, since I used) the home gym, that you would be forgiven for forgetting entirely that I have one (and so, to remind you - I have a home gym! It consists of one (entirely unused) air walker contraption and one (modestly used) cross trainer).

I have done no exercise of any sort for over two months. I am having a competition at work to see who can go the longest without eating crisps. I accidentally ate one crisp at a party last night - however I don't think I need to admit that - because surely I just ate crisp, not crisps? Anyway, the relevance of that is that we get bonus points for doing exercise and I am losing. One of my colleagues did exercise three times last week. Three times. I can't compete by simply leaving out the crisps.

So today, I dusted off my trainers and blew the cobwebs from the cross trainer and set myself a goal of 15 minutes. Paltry in comparison to the hour and a half I could manage before the wedding - however you don't come out of a honeymoon filled with fatty foods and excessive alcohol to a temple-like body. (I know the honeymoon was some time ago now - but could you please just leave me with the excuse - otherwise I have to admit to extreme laziness, which doesn't appeal to me).

So I got on the cross trainer and set it to level 4 (where I used to set it to level 5 with relative ease - or 6 with relative discomfort) and about 7 minutes in I felt like I was going to keel over, clutching at my chest - lungs giving in, heart calling it a day. I insisted on ploughing on through, but at 12 minute could take it not more and moved down to level 3 - still with some difficulty.

Ugh. It's depressing. And not only that, but I was boiling, so had to take off my sports top and was left in just my running trousers and my sports bra. Which gave me the even more depressing sight of my gently rippling stomach and not particularly small overhang. Still, I reached 15 minutes - and surely that's enough to burn off one crisp? So I don't have to admit to that crisp - right?

I think that I need some new training music though - I've set up a cross trainer playlist on my iPod, however it only has 30 songs that are beginning to be less inspiring than they once were.

Speaking of music, I have decided to make a CD of the list of music we gave the DJ to play at our wedding. He didn't play the damn songs - he played a long list of horrific rubbish, but I figure that if I make a CD of the songs we did want (very few of which he played and he only played them when I specifically went and asked) then in a few years time, I can listen to that, safe in the knowledge that my memory does not serve me well and that I'll believe we actually did have good music instead of the trash he played. Clever, eh?