The workouter

I have nothing to write about. It is indeed very sad. And I have all the time in the world. Then from tomorrow I won’t have time because it is the close week, and I will be all busy, and bugged. But if it helps, I have been very regularly reading and commenting on others’ blogs, so much so that my reader has unread items in single digits. And most of those are from Highheelconfidential, because I can’t check that at work. Too many pictures.

Having said that, the only two new developments in my otherwise routine life have been 1) The Dude is in fact travelling the whole of the next month and the rest of this month starting next week, which by the way, sucks. 2) The gym.

Point 1  we wont talk about because it only makes even more depressed if that is possible. Point 2, I did not want to talk about because whenever I talk about such things, they get jinxed. So crossing fingers, touching wood, and putting kala-teekas or whatever it takes to keep this one thing unjinxed, I am going to talk about it, for the sake of the blog.

I am not sure if I have mentioned it  before (ok, I am sure I have, I only started it that way because it sounded nice. To me) but I belong to this team of super-geeks who do super geeky stuff with numbers et al and try to present the same old numbers in different ways, forms and colors, to ensure it pleases the biggies spread across the world. Now this work, though sounds interesting (or doesn’t, actually it doesn’t), can actually get mind-numbingly monotonous. Anyhoo, considering I have been doing this for over 5 years now, the brain is somehow tuned to it, and as long as we are in companies that are relatively liberal with their Internet usage rules, I know I will survive.

So the past month or so, I realised that my daily routine provided some sort of exercise to only one part of my body, my fingers. Which helped me press lift buttons, or otherwise, typed away the whole day. And as was expected, this was met with an extremely stiff protest by the neck (notice the pun? Stiff protest? Stiff neck? Haha, I crack myself up).. So I revived the little bit of Yoga I claim to know and meticulously did it for a whole month, leading to good results. All was well, especially the timings, because I would always reach home in time to do Yoga and then proceed on to dinner and some household chores (aka cutting truckloads of veggies, which deserves a separate post, I swear).

However, The Dude decided that he was bored with his work and so shifted to another role, which needs him to be at work till 7:30 PM. Sad. I know. Now to travel with him, I would need to be at work till 7:30 too, which is totally against my basic ‘overtime does not mean hard work’ principle. And I do not want to give wrong impressions you see. So I decided to use the additional hours productively, and well, decided to join the office gym

Everything has its share of pros and cons and substantially inconsequential bits, and this does too. So I will tell you what these were

The Pros;

– It. Is. Free. And you know that is a huge plus especially when you have a history of paying and not turning up and having truckloads of guilt along with the junk food and extra weight.
– It is at work. So there are no’ Oh, who will go till there’, ‘too much traffic’, ‘can’t wake up’ excuses. It is right next to the cafeteria, so if you can go for a snack, you can totally go to the gym.
– It is good. Well equipped. And I know I don’t use most of the equipment there, or for that matter even know the right names (I have my alternative ones though)  but it feels nice to have them around. Very professional.
– My team guys are already part of the gym. Which translates to non-stop entertainment.
– And the most important. Hello, I’m working out!

The Cons;

– The day seems to revolve around ‘When will I go to the gym’. No meeting requests post 5:30 PM are even considered.
– Too many acquaintances. Ok, team people is a plus, but having people I usually maintain a hi-hello professional distance from watch me do ab-crunches, er, not so much.
– The pain. The pain. Oh my God the pain. Ok this is temporary, but right now, it is there. And how.
– The dietitian’s expectations of me. So she suggests that I have oats (2 tablespoons), one egg white, 4 almonds, and a glass of carrot juice for dinner. Aww, how kind eh? Oh, and before you worry, we have completely ignored her existence.

The inconsequential details;

– I am in awe of the regulars. Dude, 15 minutes of running on the tread mill, 20 minutes on the elliptical trainer, and then 15 minutes of rowing? What are you? A machine?
– I am this (imagine index finger and thumb stuck to each other, ‘this’ referring to the space between them) close to throwing my 2 kg, purple colored dumbbell on some people’s heads. Said people spend 2 hours at the gym, of which more than one is spent walking around, commenting on others routines, or in general proclaiming how exhausted they are. In extremely, loud voices.
– The grunters. Oh the grunters. There are a couple of heavy weight champions who only come to pick 25 Kg barbells, lifting them some 10 times, and leaving, albeit grunting everytime they do it. A grunt here will be defined as Wiki does. Anyway, the issue is, invariably these ‘sounds’ take me by surprise. And I am afraid that if I miss a heart beat when the heart rate is at the highest, the results might be irreversible.
– Oh, and of course, my awesome capability for destruction. I had gone a whole week and a half without destroying anything, so yesterday, I happened to ‘adjust’ the seat of the cycling machine in the gym for the first time, and somehow managed to raise it to the highest level instead of getting it down. Then, I was told that it operated on a ‘hydraulic jack’ and would take a long time and effort to get it down again. Sad. In my defense why do they make such user-unfriendly devices at all?
– I like green tea. And people think that is weird. Is it?

Today it is a week and 3 days since I joined the gym, and I haven’t bunked yet. Tomorrow, I have to, because I have my month close and I kinda think that I should really show that my priority at work is actually work, and not the gym at work. Doesn’t look good, and if there is no work, there won’t be any gym either right? In terms of evolution, we have improved from walking on the treadmill to running on it, albeit for short durations, increased the resistance on the elliptical trainer from 7 to 8 to 13(!) yesterday, and have also started weight training. Good, yes?

And till things get even better, I will continue. Towards my endeavour to get fit, get strong and get more food to feed my blog. Stay tuned!