what time frame I really need for this goal. Clearly the current New Year’s Eve deadline hasn’t been met…my legs do not after all look like Gwyneth Paltrow’s. So the letter of the goal has yet to be fulfilled.
But the spirit of the goal I am calling reached. My legs actually look pretty okay even in thigh highs and a miniskirt. I am not sure really that my legs have the genes to look like Gwyneth Paltrow’s legs.
On the other hand, I have been totally lazy. Hardly any toning has been going on around here. It is quite clear that with a little work I will actually get closer to achieving this goal than I have, and I want that. Ain’t nothing wrong with that. In fact…pursuing this goal is a downright decent way of pursuing my goals to run 500 days (not in a row) and to get 30+ min per day of cardio because it’s good for my brain and to learn to surf and go kiteboarding and to walk into the same gin joint twice (well I want to look fabulous when I do it) and to hike around Scotland and to climb Mt. Whitney and yell like Tarzan ...dang, now that I think about it, this goal is absolutely essential !!! ;D
Hm. The objective remains fuzzy. I am tempted to make Valentine’s Day my new extended deadline just because it is the next stupid commercial widely-observed Western “holiday.” Screw that. I hate V-Day more every year that goes by that my mate ostentatiously declines to observe the thing without abject prodding from me. You know, I am really tempted to find the most amiable single woman (or god forbid someone else with an equally unromantic partner) I can find and celebrate Valentine’s Day this year with someone who knows how it ought to be done. LOL Although that would be missing the point….
:P Still. I am getting off on a tangent here.
Well I shall fall back on that old reliable fallback, the patterns of the moon. Roughly four weeks until the February Full Moon. I have no idea how much energy I am really willing to invest. And I am trying to avoid the awful self-recriminations that follow from setting a goal I can’t actually keep. Hm.
Umm…
Okay. 30 min cardio per day is already my goal. It is part of my campaign to not get Alzheimer’s (though there are days when I wish my brain would just go on and fall out of my head already for all the good it’s doing me). But, supposedly, daily cardio that bathes one’s squishy grey matter in oxygen on a regular basis may help stave off dementia. Fine. At least, if I want to turn into a raving old bag, I would rather do it of my own free will.
I don’t know why it so often seems like it’s not worth it to fight traffic, use up gas and spend time trekking to the gym and back just to jump around and sweat a bit so I can maybe look better in my grey cords. Oh yeah, health, sanity, blah de blah…I don’t actually believe in health and sanity. I’ve never met a truly healthy and sane person, have you? (maybe I’ve just been looking in all the wrong places) In fact, most gym nuts strike me as distinctly crazed, all as tightly wound as they are clad. They seem like their heads might pop off. I by contrast have no further desire to rush around. I am through with rushing around. In fact it is looking more and more like I might skip right over middle age and proceed straight to granny. One of my favorite activities is sitting in the sun staring at bugs, just like my Granddad.
Okay, back to legs like Gwyneth Paltrow. Just cardio isn’t going to do it. As spiritually fulfilling as it is to stride along the beach and as good a form of exercise really as this is, it is moderate at best. One does not really break a sweat communing with Mother Ocean from the safety of the sand (unless one is doing aerobics or yoga at the time, which I am not). Neither is zoning out while gently sweating over the elliptical trainer or the stationary bike or even racing up and down the stairs fifty million times…ok that last one might do it but the stairs are not always free of family members I’d rather avoid & so cannot be relied on as a predictable workout routine.
No, I must do something in addition to my current minimum of making sure all my limbs still work in the regular way and I can break a sweat without experiencing cardiac arrest.
All right…every other day? that’s kind of the rule for working muscles, right? give them time to recover? Ok my goal is to do 30+ min cardio every day (every day—it’s not going to hurt me!) and 30+ min working my legs with the resistance machines. So what does that mean?
Leg extensions (quads)
Hamstring curls
Abductors
Adductors
Leg press
Grr, I am so tired of these exercises…but these are the ones I need to do for my knee, and I don’t want to do anything adventurous (like take a ballet class…goal waiting in the wings) until I’ve done what I’m supposed to do to know I can depend on the old hinge. I’ll look for variations, though…boredom is the enemy !
Tomorrow or Thursday I will list my weights and rep numbers, which at the moment are embarrassingly low.
