Rowing news? What rowing news?
I didn’t include it in my earlier entry today because there wasn’t any. We had 20+ people show up, including enough of us small female types for a women’s lightweight eight (first time this whole group had been together). And no coaches. Two of us there to row today do coach other classes, but neither of us is checked out for the coaches’ launch, and taking a class out without it is against the program’s Rules.
Instead, I went to a nearby branch of my gym, to do the arm workout T and I skipped on Wednesday. (More of that incredibly seductive sleeping-in stuff.) I did 2000 m on the rowing machine as a warmup, at a pretty good pace, then a bunch of pulls, pushes and curls. My own branch of the gym isn’t fully open yet; this one had at least three machines for each exercise. Combine that with the fact that I’ve been rowing so much I hadn’t done much lifting since getting back, and it’s not surprising that all of the equipment was a little different than what I’d been using. The motions are generally the same, but every machine is weighted a little differently, so I experimented a bit to figure out what weights to use -- the idea is to do one set each of 12, 10, and 8 reps at progressively higher weights.
And now we get to the raison d’etre for all of this gym-rat verbiage. I was especially surprised to only be lifting 30-35 pounds on the shoulder press machine (same as a military press, I think). I was fairly disgusted with myself.....until I read Marn’s entry for today, in which she discusses how proud she and her trainer were that she shoulder pressed 30 lbs, "because most girls can only do 15". I gloat. I am a stud muffaletta (female, smaller, and more tasty than a stud muffin).
Today’s Vocabulary Word:
Muffalettas are sort of New Orleans’ answer to the hoagie, if you didn’t know. Round, lots of cold cuts and veggies -- for US readers, that’s where Schlotzsky Sandwiches got the idea.