The Pain Principle

Yeah, yeah, went back to the gym, whoop de doo.
Did pretty much what Wendy advised - 20-30 minutes of hard stuff, then walk away. She says you keep on burning fat long after you stop exercising that way, as opposed, for instance, to a meandering hour on a bike that doesn't uber-elevate your heart rate or make you sweaty.

This morning, dear reader, I got damn sweaty. Only did the half-hour as instructed, but did back muscles, core muscles, arm and chest muscles, then rowed my sweaty ass off.

What is it about gym rowing machines, by the way? If the straps around your feet aren't coming loose and flapping about, the cord of your shorts is getting tangled in the mechanism, having pretty much the effect a short brick wall has on a car - threatening to catapult you into the wall, only to be dragged back down by your groinal region.

But these inconveniences aside, I did my time, goddammit.

Wendy texted me.
"Yay you," she said. "C'mon, tell me you feel alive?"
"I'd love to," I said. "Can't. Feel...the other thing."
She laughed.
"Can't walk," I elaborated. "Can't breathe. Can barely move...thumbs."
"Ah, but you're getting healthier," she buzzed back, with the insufferable enthusiasm of a gym-junkie.
"I'm so glad," I told her. "It really makes me appreciate just how wretched I feel."
"You won't feel that way in an hour," she practically instructed me.
"In an hour I'm going to be whimpering under a duvet with a whole packet of Jaffa Cakes jammed into my gob," I retorted, life coming painfully back to my thumbs.
"Water!" she demanded. "And porridge!"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah...mumble mumble Jaffa Cakes," I said again.

I really do wish I could tell you I felt good after the gym. That the memories of feeling healthy, and the prospect of feeling that way again, all came flooding back to me. But it didn't. All that came flooding back to me was the pain and the sensation of appalling slog.

"Y'know what it's like?" I asked The Enthusiastic One.
"It's like waking up from a lovely warm snuggly dream to find you're all cold and it's raining and for some reason you're in the front of the pack about to start running the London Marathon. A hundred yards down the road, that's it, you're done, and yet there's still so impossibly far to go..."
She laughed again.
"Mr Dramatic this morning I see..."
"Lea'me'lone!" I whined. "I'm gonna hold my breath till my face turns purple and my head explodes...then you'll be sorry!"

I didn't, of course. I needed every breath I could get my lungs on. And neither was she sorry. Heartless, I call it!

Bottom line, the gym is a source of unmitigated, unrelenting pain and misery at the moment.
Sigh...
I'm planning to go back tomorrow.

Oh, and one lovely thing. d came home tonight and gave me flowers. Roses, in fact. I was blown away.
She said she was proud of all the stuff I was doing and all the stuff I'd taken on...which I don't claim to really understand...but hey - it's not every day you get roses. They softened the pain of the day a whole heck of a lot. And of course, fortunately, my nose is about the only part of me that still works after this morning. So yay. Check me out - I am a rose-getting man...