gutted

Missed my badminton yesterday lunchtime, due to an expected delivery.

Sods Law means that of course the delivery was LATE, so I could have made badminton after all :( Mind you, if I'd gone to play the delivery would have arrived when I was away ....

Weights and such-like last night. Load of skipping (400 to be precise) to warm up followed by a couple of sets of deadlifts, bent over rows, shoulder presses and upright rows, then some kettlebell windmills to finish off.

Hopefully spin at lunchtime today, but I'm not actually feeling that great so far today. I shall see how I am a bit later in the morning.

Ouch!

Played badminton (singles) for an hour yesterday lunchtime. Lost one, won one. Actually that should more accurately read: got blitzed in the first, raced into a huge lead in the second only to nearly throw it away but hung on in there for the win ....

My kind colleagues duly informed me afterwards that I looked like I'd be lying in the sun for a week, my face was so red!

Kung fu at night. We worked our stances a lot at the start - currently we're spending some time looking at the supplementary (or very low) stances. These are pretty brutal on middle-aged knees lol. We moved on to practice our footwork then our strikes and kicks, before partnering up to work on the fighting methodology. We finished off by looking at throws and fells.

Then it was chi kung class to finish off the night.

NB I slept *really* well last night!!

Result!

I have a regular Sunday morning bike training ride that I do. I basically hammer up and down the cycle paths near where I stay. It's pretty much all off road, so not too much 'thinking' to do. There is a gradient, gradual but nippy enough in places to get the legs and CV system working. It's just under 9 miles in total, and I usually take the Garmin with me to grab my stats.

Yesterday's result: 10 mins off best time so far!! W00t etc. And - no stops at all (except for traffic lights). Normally I stop at least twice for a drink. Yesterday I was determined to power through the whole thing. Knackered at the end, esp when I reviewed my stats and realised that both my top speed and average speed were up for the whole ride. I didn't get the sense that my 'power' was that great, esp towards the end (the nippiest gradient of all).

Also had nasty headwind that seemed to be in my face no matter what sodding direction I was going ..... At least I wasn't clarted with anything like as much mud as I usually am ....

No deid!

Ok, so I'm not dead after all!

I've felt like it sometimes - a lot has happened since I last posted here :=)

Quick summary: the focus of my training has changed quite a lot since my last entry. I finally bought a new bike. I had inherited a friend's road bike - it scared me half to death - so I decided to replace it with a Specialized Ariel hybrid, which I love very much. It is currently an extremely grubby bike but it is my pride and joy :-)

I'm still not a great cyclist - it's been a *long* time since I was last on a bike - but I'm getting there. Hills are still not my friends either, but I'm gradually learning the right gears to use to make things easier on my legs. I try to get at least one ride of 8 - 10 miles in over the weekend, more if I can manage it. As the nights get lighter I'll hopefully get out more. I fit in longer runs at the weekend when I can. I particularly enjoyed my run out to Craigie's Farm last week (15 miles-ish round trip) - esp the lovely, lovely cake.

I'm also back playing badminton. My wee club at work is up to 3 sessions a week now, and the membership is growing. I still can't hit the site of a barn sometimes, but I'm getting faster around the court again.

I'm currently on a cycle where I'm not lifting so much weight or so often. I go through wee turns like that sometimes. No doubt when I'm on lates next week I'll be back swinging those kettlebells!

argh!!

Loads to write about but no time to do it! :=(

More classes

It's been a busy week here!

Went to the women's krav class last night. First off, it was GREAT to see big Lee back for the first time since his knee surgery. On the downside, he made us work hard lol.

We started off with some skipping just to warm us through. I *hate* skipping in bare feet as I always always manage to skiff ma tootsies with the rope at least once. It really stings with the plastic ropes as well :=) After some stretching and mobility we all grabbed a kettlebell and worked sets of 30 secs swings and 30 secs bodyweight squats. We then alternated swings and star jumps, then finished off with 20 secs and 20 secs rest of swings. Can't remember how many sets we did in total, so not entirely surely of the total work time.

Then we hit the floor for some planks and some leg raises. 3 sets of each, 20 secs each. Quick water break then we broke out the pads for some padwork.

Somewhere along the line in the warmup UTP 'pinged' her shoulder. This meant we needed to adapt the padwork slightly, so that she only held one pad for me instead of two. I took it nice and gentle as well, as she was using her weaker left hand. We also made sure we swapped holding and hitting really regularly. After a while though her other shoulder starting tensing up, so Lee suggested she sit out for a bit for a rest while I battered the heavy bag instead! A couple of the other girls then invited to join them so UTP and I moseyed on over. UTP made a good cheerleader for the three of us! We hit some good combos, starting with palm strikes then adding elbows, knees and kicks each time.

Another quick water break, and the gang voted to run through the Heave 6 stick drill again. UP's shoulder was feeling a bit better so she was up for joining in again. We managed to get quite a good rhythm going and this week nobody got clonked on the knuckles (or any where else!) which was a definite plus point! We still had a bit of flailing going on, esp when Lee suggested we try moving around as well. I *used* to be able to move and still do the Heaven drill but last night I could clearly only manage to concentrate EITHER on my hands OR my feet, but not both lololol.

Weather happened during the class. We had some torrential rain which really hammered on the roof for a while. It had eased by going home time, but I gave UTP a lift up the road anyway as she had a ways to go.

Good class though and glad to get home for my tea - was starving!

This week's classes

I have to confess that I passed on Sunday Service this week. They'd relocated to Portobello Beach for the day, which would have been nice since the sun was shining. However after 6 hours of kung fu training the day before, I decided to stay in bed instead!

Monday
Chi kung and kung fu class.

In chi kung we focused on fine-tuning 'skills' rather than techniques. Nice relaxing class that set us all up nicely for kung fu lol.

In kung fu class, we were again working on refining our skills. It pretty much picked up on a lot of the stuff we covered on the Saturday, with lots of sparring / fighting and the emphasis on movement.

I'm actually not that great at the 'movement' bit! Somewhere along the line I either:

Acquired someone else's feet
Or forgot how to get the messages to move from my brain to my feet!!

Basically I'm inclined to 'plant' myself and stand my ground, rather than to move. Also I've noticed myself that my movement is generally linear rather than a mixture of linear and circular. I'm certainly curious where these habits have come from, and I do wonder if there's an element of 'laziness' in there somewhere. I'm sure I'll learn to move in time. Getting thumped is generally a good lesson!

Tuesday
Spin class at work. Nice hard class, with the usual mixture of flats, hills and sprints. Enjoyed it a lot.

Thought of going to krav or kung fu at night, but actually had too many exciting houseworky things to do. Instead, I got my 100 reps in at home like this:

100 kettlebell swings
30 single kettlebell presses (left and right)
kung fu supplementary exercises 1, 2 and 3 - 3 sets, 5 reps each

Wednesday
Spin class at work. This was quite a challenging class, with a fair number of hill climbs and lots of fast standing flats. Was particularly sweaty at the end lol.

Chi kung and kung fu class at night.

There were a couple of new people in for chi kung plus a couple of current students that I hadn't met before. Sifu focused on some basic techniques and kept the class fairly short. I'd had quite an upset stomach before training, and I found that the class actually helped settle it a bit.

There were only 3 of us for kung fu (the earlier class was actually quite busy) so we revised some of the stuff from the seminar then moved on to some weapons 'play'. Sifu was making the point that kung fu is 'principles' based so we can used the same basics techniques no matter if we are empty handed or if we have a weapon.

Fun class, and a bit different.

Thursday
Spin class first thing. Kept it nice and light for a wee change.

Krav class tonight.