Thursday, February 15, 2007

when I grow up...

Well I should have known but of course, me being me, I didn't. Ms. Dressaday and Ms. Smartypants are famous. Of course they are. They write brilliantly, are semi-famous and have even published books. Mimi Smartypants' book is a collection of blog entries (or so it seems from reviews/summaries) and Erin, aka Ms. Dressaday, has written loads. (Sure, part of it is her job but still...)

Jealous? Moi? Well sure. I want to be fantastically literate and be able to voice all my comments on the world in a pithy, witty and winsome manner. (I also want to be able to do handstands without having a wall for safety, be able to play the guitar properly instead of massacring folk songs like Scarborough Fair and to look gloriously waif-like* for my diving holiday in 2 weeks but I don't always get what I want.) At any rate, in between bouts of work (it makes it sound like an affliction), I have been googling my idols and pandering to my stalker-esque tendencies.

.......I just got back from doing a circuit class at the gym with some of my fellow work colleagues. The circuit class involves going around various 'stations' where you do different exercises- sit ups, press-ups, lunges, tricep dips, skipping rope etc- and in my case, just to make it more fun, you also try to go a brighter shade of red and sweat more than anyone else in the class. I so totally kicked their asses. It was good to get the heart pumping though, especially as it's been hard to get out of bed this week as I'm fighting a cold. It's one of those really annoying ones where you don't really feel sick but when you get up in the morning and sit up, you can feel all the snot in your head shifting position. Just lovely. And then I get to climb tonight as well. Ha! I doubt I'll be pulling myself up anything in a hurry. That said, something at the gym must be working because the other week I was definitely aware of the climbing no-no which is using my arm muscles to just haul myself up as opposed to using my legs and technique. Graeme, my regular Thurs night climbing buddy, does it all the time. It was only the other week that I became aware of it though. Since we started at the same time one might think (at least I did) that we'd be at the same level but he consistently climbs a grade or two higher than me and it's really starting to glaze my doughnuts. I know he's naturally a bit stronger and goes to the gym more and is a bit taller (this helps) but last week we were climbing and I watched him climb something I couldn't finish and when he got down I was like, "You're a great big dirty man-cheater! I saw you just muscling through that. You are such a cheater!" We know each other well enough by now that he just smirked and shrugged and said he'd use whatever he could to get up that wall. Fair enough, it's my attitude as well. I'll try to remember that tonight when I'm peeling off the wall because my muscles are too tired...

*I will never look waif-like. I'm more of a solid load-bearing kind of girl but I also would not WANT to look waif-like, in all honesty. I like knowing that I will not snap. I also like the feeling of being able to sense my muscles working and how my body fits together which is something I most usually experience when climbing because you use your frame quite a lot when you twist and turn to reach stuff or crank up for holds and that's when you get to feel your muscles working. [Editor's note: bugger me but that was an awful sentence. *shudder*]

2 comments:

standgale said...

How come you have so many dots on your clustr map from China? That is kinda odd. :)

aynz said...

I know! I was trying to think what I'd written about that google might have tagged and people in China might have been doing searches for... I have no idea.