Tuesday 6 October 2009

Bad blogger!!

Good morning (though by the time I post this it'll no doubt me the afternoon!)

I'm going to be averaging one post a week at this rate, rubbish!!

In my defence it has been stupid busy at work with lots of deadlines that were meant to have been met last week... but weren't entirely resulting in my getting into work silly early yesterday (okay, so it was only 07:50 but given that my usual start time is 10am that's eye-wateringly early for me!!) and working til nearly 7pm.

I also had rather a busy weekend and wasn't at home much. We've had new sofas delivered - Joe took a pic and sent - lush eh?!



As well as a nice space saving computer desk, a drinks cabinet which is just beautiful and a chinese-style red cupboard/drinks cabinet type thing too. Will have to take pics and post them soon.

We're a bit worried about the cats destroying the sofas as they were quite keen on picking at the fabric ones we had before - have considered de-clawing them... haha kidding, they're outdoors cats, that would be cruel! I guess we're just going to have to yell at them if/when they scratch them or buy them a zillion scratching posts and dotting them around the house to detract their attention.

It's nearly winter though anyway which'll mean that Bella will take up her usual spot on the radiator and hopefully leave our nice leather sofas alone!



... can always hope anyway...

So because of the sofas/cupboards/cabinets our living and dining room are full of boxes and furniture that needs sorting and I think that if I were to abandon the sorting out so I could blog I'd probably get lynched!!

So, onto the last few days of radio silence...

Friday 2nd Oct

At lunch time I did my Lower Body Strength Workout (Free Weights) (see side-bar on right for more info) which was really hard work. Not because my legs were particularly weak, but because my arms are! You see, a couple of weeks ago I did quite a good heavy upper body weights session in my local gym and, afterwards, thought it would be a good idea to hop on the concept 2 rower. I only did 10 minutes but at quite a decent pace, think I covered 2100m in that time.

The thing is that it felt fine, but that was because my muscles were all warmed up. Because of this I didn't recognise the strain I was putting my right shoulder/upper biceps under and the result of this has been pain, dull but stingy pain in my right shoulder :-(

a few years ago, when I first got into triathlon, I launched myself into the swimming side of things without realising that I was hypermobile and ended up straining my rotator cuff muscles on my right side. It's not been the same since, which is why I do a lot of shoulder strength exercises with light weights to try and build up the supporting muscles in the area. I had a cortizone injection a few years back into the top of the biceps where it joins my shoulder joint - which helped for a little while but didn't provide any long-term solution.

What I'm going to do I think it try and split my upper body weight training out over more days and for less time/intensity. I've not been experienced enough to attempt this until now but I think I'm doing rather well now so will do some research, ask a few peeps for advice and give my training routines a bit of a re-jig.

Anyway, so where I was going with all the above is that I've not been able to train my upper half so my grip on the 12.5kg dumbbells was rubbish!!! I nearly dropped one a couple of times and my forearms felt very tight and sore by the end of the session.

Saturday was interesting... it's good/strange/masochistic to feel some pleasure at the knowledge that your hamstrings ache like they've been beaten with a knobbly baseball bat, DOM(S) has always been a friend of mine :-D

Friday night I worked quite late and rushed off just before 8pm to meet up with others for a friend's birthday meal and drinkies.

I managed to resist the (absolutely delicious-looking OMG I have such food envy) battered fish (Pollock) and chips - I did have a sneaky taste of a friend's later as a) she'd finished and b) my own food was rather insubstantial in terms of stomach-lining potential. When I ask for Sausages and Mash I expect a decent amount of both... what I got was this:



which would be more than adequate for a 'normal' dinner and, to be honest, I probably wouldn't even dream of eating that much potato in the evening unless I had a race/ride the next day, but I was OUT, drinking cocktails, then prosecco, then spirits, then cocktails, the champagne...

then more champagne when I managed to haggle the barman in a late night bar we ended up in down from £39 to £30 (he tried to settle at £35 but we did a coin flip and I picked heads - hurrah!). Net result, drunken TJ - look, I can't even keep my eyes open!!

I don't know *why* that extra bottle of champagne seemed like such a good idea at the time - it certainly didn't the next day!

I was certainly a lot more drunk than most people but I think that's more to do with the fact that I don't drink during the week anymore - this is my 'drink of choice' at home (annoyingly my son keeps trying to nab bottles of this... he thinks because it's zero alcohol that means it's okay for him to have all of mine - err no, I don't think so mate!)

I really like the taste though and it's very handy when I come home from a stressy day at work and fancy a beer as this has a fraction of the calories and doesn't make me groggy!

Saturday 3rd Oct

...was spent feeling like shit. I felt utterly destroyed, why do I do it to myself?! I don't seem to have a 'okay-now-stop-you've-had-enough' mechanism, I can just drink and drink - not good!

I felt poisoned, belly all bloated, feeling sick, dizzy and just generally sorry for myself - bit of a waste of space really!

After I pulled myself together with the help of a protein pancake, this one was made up of:



and was definitely worth it - I'm still pleased that despite my horrid-hangover-from-hell I was able to resist the bacon and egg sarnies that have become a staple of my boys' weekend diet... mutter mutter

We went out with some friends on Saturday night, one of whom is just over from Thailand where he's been living for the past 2 years or so, in his own house, which he built himself from mud bricks and is on a plot of land owned by a farmer. He also built an oven to bake bread to sell to local businesses and grows his own vegetables - which form the bulk of his diet. That and a little bit of meat at times and lots sticky rice... the cooking water of which can be turned into wine, how cool is that?

ahh, sounds like such a simple, peaceful existence. Fascinating but terrifying at the same time! I'm not sure if I could survive without all my non-essential gadgets, which is a bit of a sad thought really! But I console myself with the thought that we as humans have 'evolved' so that we don't *have* to - well, not in the developed world anyway. It's probably all a big con and I'd be happier in a cave with an open fire, but then if that were the case then why aren't we all doing that?!

Sunday 4th Oct

I still can't believe how quickly October has crept up on us... not used to not typing '0...' when entering the month, I think that time is speeding up.

We'd stayed at Joe's parent's place (aka my second home) on Saturday night so Sunday, when I finally surfaced (no, I didn't get drunk the night before, I didn't drink anything actually! I was just feeling a bit peaky and like I needed to catch up on sleep) we had a lazy Sunday morning, lounging in Joe's parents' new conservatory (doesn't sound particularly interesting but it's fabulous, really impressive, just a nice space to be in really :-) ) and then a nice pheasant casserole for lunch followed by cheese, yum... managed to not drink still despite the particularly nice looking red that was floating about the dining table!

That evening when we got back to London I took Joe to the gym to give him a run for his money on the free weights (see "My current strength and core training routines" again in the sidebar on the right).

I thought I'd play it safe as haven't done much upper body stuff (as I mentioned earlier) for weeks! I used 8kg dumbbells for my shoulder press, upright rows and concentration curls and I could really feel the difference from not having trained for a while... felt soooo weak! :-(

thankfully I didn't feel sore-in-the-wrong-way (i.e. pain, not muscle ache!) afterwards so am just keeping an eye on how it all feels in the shoulder area.

I finished off my workout with half an hour on the Cardio Wave... love that machine, especially as it has a built in TV so you can laugh at a wildlife expert getting 'shagged by a rare parrot' on Stephen Fry's 'Last Chance To See' program. I was laughing so hard at this part that I nearly fell off the damn machine. As it was late in the evening and the moody staff had switched off the main TVs, nobody had a clue why some girl was hysterically giggling away to herself (when I say 'giggling' it was less girly than that, more like guffawing to be perfectly honest!) and they now think I'm (more) mad (than they thought before)!

Monday 5th Oct

I bet you know someone with this birthday, or the 6th Oct? I know loads, it's a popular time!

I got into work pretty early like I said before and worked for nearly 11 hours before dashing to get my train, cooking a lovely beef and black bean sauce stir-fry (with thick noodles for the boys) and then just generally lounged on the sofa for the rest of the evening... pretty mundane stuff really but sometimes it's good to do bugger all for a change!

So, onto today...

Tuesday 6th Oct

Today I was a little sneaky and had some of my delicious bread for breakfast - look at this though, how could you resist?!!



I received my delivery from Maximuscle today of 2 boxes for Promax Diet bars (their 'Buy two boxes for £35' deal is still going, it works out to less than £1.50 a bar - snap it up while you still can!)

The lovely people at Maximuscle also sent me 2 free pouches of Cyclone, which is great as a) that's what Joe uses and b) it's handy for if we go away for a weekend as will be easier than taking tubs - why don't they do that with Promax Diet eh?! Then lazy people like me can keep them handy and not have to measure out scoops ;-)

I was sooo glad to get some more chocolate and orange Promax Diet bars as had run out of that flavour and only had the plain dark chocolate ones so I had half of one as soon as they arrived for my mid-morning snack. Then for lunch I had a huuuuge Tuna steak, small amount of cous cous, salad, tabasco sauce and balsamic glaze:



that pic doesn't do the tuna steak justice, it was *much* larger, I'd just buried the end under salad!

I'm feeling very nervous about this Friday's photoshoot for the Maximuscle Body of 2009 comp, I'm still to get some sort of matching sporty outfits (all mine are just, well, odds and sods!) but I'm going to prepare by getting a spray tan done later.

I'm probably more nervous about this to be honest! I've used fake tan in the past to disasterous effect - i.e. putting that 'slow developing' stuff on before going on a night out... then dancing and therefore sweating, and coming home with huge orange streaks... NOT a good look!

I asked the lovely lady at Maximuscle who rang me up to let me know I'd made the finalists and also sent me the info if she knew of any good brands (I've only heard of St Tropez but I guess they're a bit 'old hat' now?) and she said she'd used Fake Bake in the past but that the company was under new management and the quality wasn't as high. But she did mention Xen Tan which is an American product but is over here now and used in salons.

I put my postcode in the 'salon locator' doodar thingy and found a place near my work, where I actually get a 10% discount at - superb!

I'm off there later, bit apprehensive, especially thinking back to P!nk's video for her song 'Stupid Girl' where it goes a little wrong and she ends up looking like a Wotsit:



...or... worse still I could look like this!!


I'm sure I won't, doesn't stop me feeling nervy... will report back later!

TJx

2 comments:

  1. holy catch up post, batman!! wow that was a humdinger...

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  2. HAHA, my dads bdays on the 6th ;) Dont worry, sure the spray tan will look fab!

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