That's a nice hat

In my effort to show that I am not just a participant in resoultion day , I have continued in my training at the gym and walking up Mt Ainslie 3 times a week. Today was one of those days, however, where I think it was lucky I made it out of the changeroom. I am running on a severe lack of sleep at the moment, so by the middle of the day I am finding myself a bit tired and concentration is not what it could be. After attending a fun session on "what is metadata and why is it so fab" (I don't think that was the official title of the course, but it sums it up pretty well), I toddled downstairs to get changed. My wonderful husband, Tim, always makes sure I have a cap of some kind packed in my gym bag so I don't get my nose sunburned - it is black and has a breast cancer ribbon on the front of it. Today I got changed and was about to head out the door when I realised I didn't ave my cap. I unzipped my bag, grabbed the black, round object inside and whacked it on my head. Just then one of the other women at work came in the door and stopped dead, giving me a really weird look. When I glanced in the mirror, I realised I had placed my carefully folded black BRA on my head. Oh god. There is just NO recovery from a situation like this, so I just kept on trucking out through the door and removed it on the way (bra, not the door). Adds new meaning to having boobies on the brain. Sigh. Surely Cathy Freeman never had to deal with this sort of crap.

Getting rid of that spare tyre

My personal trainer (sorry, I know it’s a wank to talk about your personal trainer, but I do have one and she makes me work really hard) has been revealing a new and sadistic side over the last 2 months that at times have me wondering why I pay such good money to cop such amazing abuse. Not verbal, although there have been times when I am dripping sweat and about to collapse on the floor under 20kg of weights and she says something like “isn’t this fun?”, it comes bloody close. She really needs to redefine her idea of fun – I think we may have different interpretations of the word. For me, fun means lying on a beach, drinking long island iced tea and having buff, gorgeous, half naked men bring you drinks. Whole lot of fun happening there. What is NOT my idea of fun is running so fast on a treadmill you think your thighs are about to burst into flames and then doing 3 zillion bench presses. It farking hurts, is distressing for everyone in the immediate area because that type of exercise tends to stir up my gut (fluff-o-rama) and results in the whole “walk like a duck” phenomenon for 3 days afterwards.

Last week Sophie hit new heights (or lows) of “how to work out”. My long suffering training partner, Sue, and I turned up and we started off with a jog on the treadmills to warm up. I was about 2 minutes into this when I spied 2 piles of CAR TYRES in the training room. Not seeing any cars nearby, a feeling of dread crept over me that had nothing to do with the sudden realisation I had forgotten to put on any knickers under my exercise gear and I now had seams going into new and exciting places. Sophie then bounded up and said “I’ve got some great new equipment – you’ll love it!!!” Note the number of exclamation marks in there – when your lover says this to you as he (or she) bounds into the bedroom with some sexy lingerie and two glasses of champagne (no tyres in sight), you know they are probably telling the truth. When this is said to you by an uber fit trainer who kicks arse for a living and has a great effing stack of car tyres behind her, it can only mean BAAAAAD ju ju.

Sure enough, for the next 45 minutes Sue and I got to pick up tyres (one at a time, thank god), raise them above our heads, RUN (!!!!!!!!!!) for 30 meters, do 10 squats, RUN ANOTHER (!!!!!!!!!!) 30 meters and then do 10 push ups. And now I am so amazingly fit and healthy, I can do pushups on my toes (someone kill me now), not on my knees. I lost count how many squats, runs and pushups I did, but I know by the way Tim had to literally help me out of bed the next morning, it was a fair old effort. What was funny (in retrospect) was the look on the faces of the rest of people in the gym at the time. The whole “tyre training” episode took place in front of the treadmills bikes, rowing machines and stair climbers, so everyone else working out got to watch Sue and I turn colour from pink to puce to a colour that had a few of them murmuring that we may need an ambulance. To say that the whole spectacle had some of them galloping for the reception desk to cancel their PT session with Sophie would be an understatement. What topped it off was a few potential clients being shown through the place and as I jogged past the, tyre over my head and loudly letting one rip (sorry, no room for a nice way of saying it), the girl doing the tour was saying it was a “lovely gym with modern equipment, a quiet atmosphere and trainers who are there to help you achieve your goals”. Now, hands up everyone whose fitness goal is to be able to run around with a tyre over their head and fart at the same time?

I have recovered and can’t wait for tonight’s training session – I am thinking that Sue and I are likely to be confronted with cabers that we will be expected to run up and down the street with and then balance on our heads whilst we do sit ups. Yee hah!

Resolution day

Happy new year to all out in Internet land. We have made it through the silly season more or less unscathed, although my mum did go for the sympathy vote by throwing herself over the handlebars of her pushbike on December 23rd and smashing her wrist to pieces, requiring surgery and several bits of titanium to put it all back together again. She will now be international woman of mystery when going through the security screening points at airports. We met my sister's new beau, who seems very nice and I only managed to give my liver a moderate caning, so I am guessing that this sedate behaviour means I am well and truly looking down the barrel of middle age. As long as I am not required to act like a grown up most of the time, all will be well.

I managed to keep on the fitness wagon over Christmas but I have to say now that the new year has rocked around, I am noticing a phenomenon that I would like to call "resolution day". It occurs on January 2nd (once everyone is over their hangovers). In the week between Christmas and new year, I could have jogged naked around the lake in Gungahlin and no one would have noticed, as the bike paths were devoid of all signs of hum life. Probably would have been some collateral damage to the local duck population and various parts of my body which just don't bounce like they are meant to, but I am pretty sure I wouldn't have been arrested. At my local gym I could have worn a Borat style mankini and the only people suffering would have been the gym staff, as the local gym junkies were off somewhere else. Then, suddenly, January 2nd dawned and BAM!!! you could not run more than 10 paces (a challenge for me on some days anyway) without coming across another jogger/runner/bike rider/power walker or person engaged in the "I really shouldn't have eaten that extra 10kg of lobster at Christmas" purge. Now, if making New year resolutions work for you, tops. My approach to new year resolutions is to see how quickly I can break them, so I will be interested to see if the crowds thin at all over the next month or if the "resolution" holds firm.

Anyway, happy new year to all, hope santa was nice to you and I'll be back to bore you all again soon.