jodi's weblog :: navel gazing

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workout update

March 21, 2011

Seriously, this is all about my workout, so feel free to skip it if you just don’t give a rat’s arse. I’m not offended.

Since our time in Boot Camp ended at the end of January, Peter and I have been working out together 5 mornings a week, using a routine and schedule that Peter put together to see him through from Boot Camp to the beginning of Daylight Savings Time. At which time he begins to set the alarm at 7:00 instead of 6:00 (shift your schedule instead of your body; avoid the pain of DST lag! It works!), ride his bike to work and go to the gym in the evenings, leaving me on my own in the morning. In order to stay motivated without a workout buddy, I need a finite goal to focus on, one where I get some kind of cookie at the end (even if the cookie is just the knowledge that I achieved a goal).

I also have another goal, although it’s starting to look like a fairly modest one:

And that goal is to be able to run all the way around that lake up there, without stopping, by August.

I’ve never been much of a runner; my ankles roll over easily and beside, I’m totally lazy, y’all. But last August when Pennsictime rolled around I was two months into a three month stint with a personal trainer, and I didn’t want to lose all that I’d gained (or gain back what I’d lost, har-de-har). Marco (formerly of Refine Fitness, our neighbourhood gym) gave me a couple of workout routines to do in camp, and Peter and I ran around the lake first thing in the morning before getting down to it. Now, for real runners this lake is a piece of cake, and I’m anticipating that getting around it once is only going to take around seven minutes (seriously, it’s tiny) but last year I couldn’t even make it a third of the way (for Pennsic folks, that’s from Wulf Den to Pandora’s Box) without stopping for a breather. Yeah, seriously out of shape.

So today I started the Couch to 5K programme, with the help of the lovely free podcast from the NHS. The plan was actually to start C25K and the One Hundred Push Ups programme at the same time, as the two together seem doable in a single workout, but I forgot to do the pushups test ahead of time (early fail!). So this week I’ll be working C25K into my regular 5 morning workouts, and starting next week the official plan will be thus:

Monday, Wednesday and Friday: Couch to 5K on the treadmill at the gym, then upstairs to do the 100 Pushups training, after which I probably won’t bother with any cooldown beyond stretching

Tuesday and Thursday: 20 minutes cardio on the bike or cross trainer, one of my 5 weight routines, then 10 minutes cooldown on the treadmill

Saturday: optional, probably light cardio and once through the weight machines circuit

Sunday: day off.

The 5 weight routines are the ones Peter and I have been doing together since February, which I’ll talk about in more detail in my week-end recaps (because this here is already enough reading about something that interests only me, am I right?). There’s one kettlebells routine, two that use mostly body weight working a mix of upper and lower body, a routine that’s mostly abdominals, and the Day 5 Grab Bag, which is where I just pick a half dozen or so free weight exercises, whatever I feel like doing (it usually involves those wide grip pulldowns and barbell rows, which are my all time faves). I’ll also be working on raising my weights, so I’ll be recording the weight here to track my progress.

Couch to 5K is a 9-week programme, 100 Pushups is 6 weeks; I expect it’ll take me longer than the six weeks to get to 100 pushups, and Week 1 of that will be starting when I’m already on Week 2 of C25K. So this plan should see me through the next nine weeks before I need to come up with another goal and another plan. And come Pennsic I’ll be running around that lake 3 times without stopping, just watch.

I’d like to insert a photo of rippling quads here, but my quads have a soft blanket of fat over them that’s quite becoming, really, but pretty much hides all muscular definition away from view. So instead, because a blog post loves a picture, here’s one of that lovely lake (which I may or may not have posted before) Shot with the Holga, hacked with foam and rubberbands to hold 35mm film.

again, for Pennsic people, this is from the back of House Redhair (across from Wulf Den), gazing across at an angle to Casa Barducci. Whoa, nerdy enough yet?

Posted by jodi on March 21, 2011 at 3.06pm
Categories: let's get physical, navel gazing :: 2 comments

like a record, baby

January 30, 2011

New tattoos: shoulder (me) and inner forearm (Peter). Slightly different red inks but otherwise the same. Inked by Qpaukl Kimmerly at rEvolution gallery + studio, Kingsville, Ontario.

Posted by jodi on January 30, 2011 at 9.18am
Categories: i have nothing interesting to say so let me show you what i bought instead, listening project, navel gazing :: 1 comment

drop the needle

January 29, 2011

Peter and I are getting matching tattoos today!

Posted by jodi on January 29, 2011 at 8.11am
Categories: listening project, navel gazing :: No comments

power

January 3, 2011

I’ve been reluctant to write about my workouts here even though they have dominated much of the last eight months of my life. It’s hard to say exactly why, but it’s related to an offhand remark that I made a year ago regarding buffet restaurants and Manifest Destiny, a remark that I was asked to clarify and which I fully intended to clarify but THEN! I became terrified that maybe anything I tried to say on the matter would be misconstrued as fat hatred (and a fat hater I am most definitely NOT) and I’m still trying to figure out how to say what I want to say about the buffet thing that has nothing to do with social class or obesity or hating on Americans without it being mistaken for those things because that’s what people think of when they hear the word “buffet”, and it’s now well after anyone who might have cared a little has stopped. Caring, that is.

So when I signed up for three months with a personal trainer last summer, I didn’t mention it here because of the racks of “women’s fitness” magazines at the grocery store whose cover stories are not about muscles and about bone density but about flat abs! and bikini bodies! and losing twenty pounds in two weeks! (like there’s any real way to do that which doesn’t involve lopping off one’s leg). I didn’t mention it because of the way that people but mostly the women people, at parties, feel obligated to hover around the sugary treats saying oh, I shouldn’t eat that, it’ll go to my hips/belly/ass/wherever, oh I want it but I shouldn’t, as if this ritual is somehow required before one shuts up and either eats the thing or doesn’t. I didn’t mention it because of the way that one can’t say anything about one’s body without prompting people to say, oh but you’re not fat like fat is some kind of diseased state or moral failing instead of just a word for something that is part of our bodies that we need to have in order to live. I didn’t mention it because people always assume, like just today I was on the phone with someone talking about my workouts and that someone said “I never would have thought someone like you needed to lose weight” like there couldn’t possibly be any other motivation for someone like me (someone female?) to work out.

Well, fuck all that.

I still don’t really know what to say about it, except for this: I want to be powerful. I want my body to be able to do amazing things. I want to repair some of the damage to my bone density that I can only imagine I must have done in twenty five years of consuming practically no calcium rich foods. I want to sleep well at night and have energy for the day and I want to have a healthier heart than any of my grandparents had and I want to shovel my own driveway when I’m eighty and I want to slay vampires and I want to be an ass kicking sweaty bundle of POWER. That’s all.

Posted by jodi on January 3, 2011 at 8.44pm
Categories: let's get physical, navel gazing :: 15 comments

eryngium (sea holly)

December 15, 2010

A little early birthday gift to myself. I’ll now spend the rest of my life telling people no, it’s not a scotch thistle. Don’t worry, it’s not crooked, I’m just holding my arm funny.

Drawn by me, inked by qpaukl kimmerly at rEvolution gallery + studio in beautiful downtown Kingsville, Ontario.

Posted by jodi on December 15, 2010 at 11.40am
Categories: navel gazing :: 2 comments

watch this space

December 14, 2010

I only just realized this morning that my desire to cross the line between “person with tattoos” and “heavily tattoed person” is a symptom of the same horror vacui that dictates that my prints must be buried under a stifling amount of imagery, that my dining room plate rail must overflow with tchotchkes, that the paper, fabric, yarn and drawing materials in my home studio must be visible at all times, that my wardrobe be a ragtag mess of colourful layers. Possibly also the same instinct that has me lugging around a purse containing three notebooks, a pencil case full of markers, anywhere from four to eight cameras at a time, two or more knitting projects. . .

Heading to Kingsville today to fill up some more empty space.

Posted by jodi on December 14, 2010 at 9.40am
Categories: navel gazing :: No comments

photo

November 30, 2010

After working at Artcite all day I look like I’ve been in a Russian prison.

Posted by jodi on November 30, 2010 at 9.56pm
Categories: navel gazing :: No comments

hands wet on the wheel

September 25, 2010

Today I drove a car for the first time in twenty-two years.

In Mario Cart I always spin out on the grass when I try to corner too tightly. Of course I was probably going about ten kilometres an hour here. For the record I did not spin out, or hit the curb, or pump up and down on the gas and brake like an old person and give everybody in the car whiplash. I even sort of remember how to drive, it’s just that the last time I drove it was in huge muscle cars with no power steering and you had to really reef on the brake and take wide corners.

Check it out. I am totally in control of this car. This very slow moving around an empty parking lot car.

I even went on the road (only a tiny bit). And here’s my first parking job! In what, appearances to the contrary, was NOT an empty parking lot and there were other cars moving around in there and everything. And after I took this picture I walked right out in front of a car, whoops.

I feel like such a grown up.

Posted by jodi on September 25, 2010 at 8.36pm
Categories: navel gazing, things are happening :: 1 comment

a visit to huron park, september 5 2010

September 15, 2010

An old artillery range, left over from WWII when our town was a Royal Canadian Air Force training station. We used to climb up to walk along the top of the narrow concrete wall (of course) and dig through the gravel on the roofs of the two attached sheds to find old bullet casings.

The old water tower. A new, more modern tower was erected earlier this year, so this beloved old structure may not be long for this world.

Claire standing on a (now completely overgrown) concrete bridge where as a preteen I whiled away many summer hours sitting with hockey school boys, listening to them talk about all of the exotic and far away places from which they came (Toronto, Detroit, Niagara Falls). Ah, hockey school boys, my first and best crushes.

Not much has changed down at the school, the gym, offices and senior wing of which were destroyed by fire in December of 2003. A few more holes in the floor, a stronger smell of mould emanating from the boarded-up wall.

This hole is new, at the edge of what was once the girls’ shower room. Last time we were here Peter dug out one of the shower drains for me, from that spot at the lower right that is now caving into the basement; we’ll put it in our own shower some day when we renovate our bathroom.