Notes by Nectar

I had a session with Trevor on Sunday morning. After 5 minutes on the bike, I did 14 minutes on the treadmill:

• 5 km x 2 min
• 5 km x 2 min (5% incline)
• 7 km x 1 min (5% incline)
• 5 km x 1 min (0 incline)
• 7 km x 1 min (4% incline)
• 5 km x 1 min (0 incline)
• 7.5 km x 1 min (3% incline)
• 5 km x 1 min (0 incline)
• 7.5 km x 1 min (2% incline)
• 5 km x 1 min (0 incline)
• 7.5 km x 1 min (1% incline)
• 5 km x 1 min

After that I had some water and we started doing some boxing:

• Jabs x 30 s
• Squats x 30 s
• Hooks x 30 s
• Squat/twist x 30 s
• Uppercuts x 30 s
• Mountain climbers x 30 s
• Padwork x 30 s
• Treadmill step-ups x 30 s
• Rest x 1 min
• Bench squats x 30 s
• Padwork x 30 s
• Wall squat x 30 s
• Padwork x 30 s
• Alternating lunges x 30 s
• Padwork x 30 s
• Sit-ups x 30 s
• Padwork x 30 s
• Rest x 1 min
• Piston punches x 30 s
• Combined knee-high/twist x 30 s
• Padwork x 30 s
• Rest x 30 s
• Padwork x 30 s
• Something I can’t remember x 30 s

God, that was tiring! I then did a circuit of the following exercises:

• Combined lateral raise/front raise (3-kg weights) x 10
• Deadlifts (bar) x 20
• Mountain climbers x 15
• Shoulder press (3-kg weights) x 15
• Tricep dips x 15
• Lateral pulldown x 15
• Abductor machine x 15
• Tricep extensions x 15
• Abdominal toe touches x 15

I finished with 5 minutes on the treadmill at 5.5 km with an incline of 10%. Well, I was supposed to, after 2.5 minutes I reduced the incline to 8%! I then did a few stretches and was finished. Hurrah!

I went back to the yoga class at the Shangri-La Hotel on Monday morning. There was a different teacher this time – a man called Ritesh – and there were just three of us, all women. Again, we started running on the spot as a warm-up and kicking our legs from side to side, and so on. He also referred to ‘downward dog’ as ‘mountain pose’. And he sometimes said ‘toes’ and he sometimes said ‘feet fingers’. Good grief – learn English. But by far the worst thing about this class was the awful techno music. In fact, one of the other women complained about it at the end of the class. When I do yoga at home, I’m not surrounded by mirrors so I have no idea what I look like while I’m doing it. I also have no idea about the way my body is aligned – other than my teacher adjusting me every now and then. In this class at the Shangri-La, I realised how different the right side of my body is from the left. I noticed this while I was in bow pose – my right leg goes much higher than my left. It would make sense as my right side is stronger than my left, but I’d never really thought about how it looked.

I had my usual yoga class at home on Tuesday morning.

I woke up on Wednesday and I was sore all over. I was also so tired and was very tempted to cancel my session with Trevor. Instead, I got out of bed, got ready and sat down with a cup of tea. At 8am, Trevor texted me to say he wouldn’t be able to make it as he wasn’t well. Part of me wanted to climb back into bed, but as I was already ready I decided to go to the gym anyway. I walked on the treadmill for 30 minutes – I started at a speed of 5.5 km/h and gradually increased it to 6.3 km/h. After that I did two sets of lower body exercises and decided I’d had enough.

I had planned to go to yoga at the Shangri-La on Thursday morning, but on Wednesday night I found out I had to be in Sharjah by 10am to sign the form for my passport to be returned. So I didn’t go. And I didn’t work out over the weekend.

Low point of the week? Just being sore, I think – but even that’s good in a way!

High point of the week? I went out for dinner on Thursday but again didn’t drink very much. Actually, that’s a lie – I had four glasses of red wine (in the space of four hours), but I didn’t switch to vodka when the others did.

Weight loss? The trend was going down but by the end of the week it was on the up again! Boo.

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