Speaking of humiliating myself in front of lots and lots of people, we went to the Y this evening after dinner. Now, after 3 days of walking all day, up and down staircases, playing games on the beach, and dancing from 10pm ‘til 1 to 2am, my legs already hurt. But, we’re back home now and need to get back into our routine (lord knows, we don’t need any more no-shirt situations looking like that!).
Normally, Jayme goes to her class and I hit the treadmill. Not tonight. We were running late and needed to get dinner beforehand and all was a bit crazy, so Jayme missed her class. And by the time we dropped the kids off, there were no treadmills for me and the other resistance equipment was already taken up (damn New Year’s Resolution do-gooders).
Anyhoo, I joined Jayme at the weights and she started to walk me through her routine when she has one of her weight training nights. The first few weren’t so bad, as I had learned some of her reps before at home. But then things went downhill. Quickly.
We do 10 reps a set, and she has 7 or 8 sets of different types of weight exercises. Each type determines its own weight size, so we switched from 15 to 20 to 25 to 15 to 20 and all that. Okay fine. I’m a girly man, I get it. But at least I’m trying. Then, we do lunges (dear god), followed by some squats (AYFKM with this?!). Oh and then, she busts out with, “Okay, now for some cardio!”
Oh hell.
She says we’re going to run up the windy (not windy as in the wind blows, but wind-ey) staircase up to the top, run 2 laps around the track and then run back down. Umm, sure we are. And then takes off.
Admittedly, I haven’t really run anything or anywhere in quite a while. But, holy balls am I out of shape! I got up the damn staircase thing and got 3/4 of the way around the track and felt like I was about to have a heart attack right there. So, I walked the rest of that lap and the next. Of course, there’s Jayme waiting for me at the ramp down, jogging in place. She told me to try to run down, where we’d start again with the weights. Ok, now she’s just being ridiculous.
We go through the sets again and instead of running this time, we’re going to do jumping jacks (yay team!), but the she tells me the number. 100. Really? I did 25. Figured I’d give myself something to work up to! ;)
By this point, I’m ready to run from the building screaming that she’s lost her damn mind. She then takes me over to the “core” area. Ooh, score! She lays on her stomach and says we’re going to do planks. Having no idea what that is, she shows me. I’m thinking to myself, this is not so bad. Essentially, get ready to do a push-up, but don’t. Awesome, I can do this. Yeah. No I can’t. I lasted 10 seconds and hit the mat. SHe said, “Get back up” and that’s when I shared with her my little secret. If my abs continue to shake and quiver like they were doing, somebody would be cleaning stuff off the floor that they didn’t want to be cleaning up. I’m not saying, I’m just saying.
After laughing for a bit, she got up to do pull-ups and I stayed there to do crunches. I was finally proud of myself as I did 3 sets of 10 reps in crunches. It’s been years since I’ve done those, and I’ll confess they were not consecutive, but they got done.
All in all, I walked, nay, hobbled out of the Y with a newfound respect for my wife and all of her gym time and training and running stuff that she does. It is NOT easy and anyone who can dedicate themselves to bettering their self and their health like that deserves to be commended. I guess that’s what allows people like Jay to wake up after a night of serious dancing and go run a 5K, while on vacation!
I am proud of her, though, and I hope this is a start of me trying to catch up with her and maybe become a little healthier for it.
(Btw, still humiliating to know that you’re wife can kick your ass at physical stuff…doh!)
