the gym is history

I finally actually cancelled my gym membership yesterday. I can go for the next month, thanks to their silly "processing time" what-what. I might even do that. Anyway, yesterday I did an all-out, lift as much as I felt like kind of workout at the gym, because when will I get to see a squat bar again??? fully expecting to be sore today, but apparently I didn't push myself as hard as I might have, because I wasn't sore this morning. I even felt like I'd pulled a muscle yesterday, but no. And I didn't even hit the ibuprofen! (cause we ran out.)

So today I got started on the hard-core home workouts. I went to the crossfit site and the workout of the day consisted of 3 rounds of a 400m sprint, 21 kettlebell swings and 12 pullups. Well, I can't be running 400m down the street while the child's asleep, I don't own a kettlebell and I have no pullup bar. (Let's leave aside, for the moment, the fact that I cannot actually DO a pullup. Heh.)

But - I have a stepstool, a pedometer, an empty big-ass laundry detergent container, and a table. So, I filled up the laundry detergent container (LDC) with water and found that it weighed 25 lbs - all good - checked to make sure the pedometer sort of worked, and did 3 rounds of 400 stepups (as measured by the pedometer, I wasn't up to *counting* to 400), 21 LDC swings, and 12 table pullups, wherein one lies under the table, grabs the edge, and pulls up. It's sort of more a reverse pushup than a pullup, but it's still sufficiently hard and in the spirit of honesty I will say that I did not do 12 in a set. Oh, and the child awoke just as I was finishing the 2nd round so I never really finished the workout either - according to my spiffy timex, about 13 minutes had elapsed. 13 minutes is better than no minutes!!!

It was bloody hard though, definitely had me sweating and puffing, and if I can get my act together to work out before the child is likely to wake up, it'll be all good.

sugar is not my friend

Ok, so it's the first time in 3 days I've had a chance to exercise and I feel like someone stomped on my head, and I'm pretty sure it's because I just HAD to "take care" of the leftover carmelized apples that went on my father-in-law's birthday cheesecake.

Dummy.

I'm gonna take the last advil, wait 10 minutes, and do some shovelgloving. It's a good time.

Getting serious with the cheap

After a nearly 10-year relationship, I'm breaking up with my gym.

We don't spend enough time together. It's $34/mo down the drain. Plus, the gym folk have turned into poo-heads, they're all aggro about selling stuff and they're pushy and obnoxious and they were mean to a friend of mine.

So it's over. But I still want to get fit-ified, so I'm gonna do it at home, without spending any money or accumulating any exercrap, and most of the workouts need to be doable in my living room while my child sleeps or otherwise amuses herself.

I figure a combination of bodyweight exercises, stuff like pilates (for which I already have a DVD so it doesn't count as an expense and it was only $10 anyhow), and lifting some heavy things ought to do it. I was floundering around trying to figure out a routine, or a workout schedule or something when I came across crossfit.com - which is pretty much what I was aiming for, except with some modifications on the olympic lifts part because as much as I'd like one, there's no room for an olympic weight set in the living room. So my huge-ass laundry detergent containers filled with water will have to do what they can as weights, and the rest I can probably manage.

For anyone else wanting to get fit 4 cheap, follow along as I shamelessly rip off the workout of the day (WOD) on crossfit.com and adapt it to my equipment-less living room!

Today turned out to be a great day to get started because the WOD consisted of... a 5 k run. Now THAT I have equipment for, and the child was fortunately at her grandparents' place so I took the hound and ran to Clover Point and back, which I *think* is 5 k from my house but I will check with the car odometer to be sure when I go out later. Anyway, I did it in 34 minutes, which is not going to get me on any running team anytime soon, BUT I did run the whole way, even the uphill-ish bits with the wind and rain against me, and I didn't even hate it.

Oh, it's customary to state goals and whatnot, isn't it? Ok, I wanna get down to 25% body fat by the time we go to Hawaii so I look all cute in my hideous floral-print bathing suit. How's that for vain stupid goal-setting? Let's see if I can do it.

Below is the "before" picture of me. 152 lbs, 38% body fat. Note the stylish workout togs. No lululemon for me! Also, my face is all red because I forgot to take the picture BEFORE my run.