The Dread Doctor

OH! OH! Today has started very well. Much has happened and I can't wait to relate it to you.

First of all Bubbles, never one to waste time in idle conversation has invented a new word!

Mutigue

[muh-teeg] - the combination of muscle and fatigue, the goal of any good workout! "That routine left me completely mutigued!"

How cool is that? I'm totally using that word!

I get up at 4:45am, enter the temporal vortex that surrounds the gym and start my tempo workout at 5:45am. I feel pretty good about that, only an hour lost today! I have no idea where that time goes, but probing by aliens is probably involved since I forgot to line my hat with tinfoil.

I'm hammering it out on the elliptical getting my HR up waiting for Bubbles, I'm looking forward to today because she's going to show me a mess-o-new-cardio and I'm going to get a new opportunity to bitch and moan about it!

Life is good.

I'm about five minutes into the routine when my addled mind informs me that it might be a good idea to actually turn the stupid Garmin on otherwise no one will believe my awesome feats, there will be no record.

Somewhere around six AM I hear Bubbles voice in the hallway yakking with awesomeGirl and I feel a twinge of nerves. It's kinda funny but now its showtime baby and I'm hoping this buttercup can keep up! I want to do twenty at a high HR before seeing what delights Bubbles has in mind for me and the first five minutes are lost, they didn't happen since the Garmin didn't record them. You follow my reasoning of course.

Bubbles comes over to the elliptical holding sheaths of paper and I ask/tell her that I have about ten more minutes to go - she's cool with that while eying my heart rate. Meanwhile IronMan has gotten off the bike and is looking for something to lift and I don't think goodMood was in the gym yet.

You know the lateral pull down machine, right? Ours sort of looks like this. Well IronMan walks over and grabs the bench one handed and moves the machine about five or six inches to the left! That boy is strong and it was so casual for him. He probably parallel parks his car by carrying it into the space.

Then he unhooks that pole the dude in the pic is pretending to pull down, puts his toes on the bench, holds himself out parallel to the floor in a plank using the bar for support and does push ups. This bores him so he does one arm ones.

I'm glancing, disbelieving, over at Bubbles seeing if she's catching this...

OH NO!

Bubbles isn't just catching this, she's actively studying it, honestly I can see the wheels turning, new horrors being invented right before my eyes!

I swear to Gawd IronMan if I end up in a tux, cane and top-hat reenacting Guys and Dolls - The Cardio Version for Bubbles' off Broadway show (following Zumba!) I'll...

Well I'll...

Blog it I guess, it sounds kinda fun.

::hums Puttin' on the Ritz::

Bubbles starts showing me the routines and I'm not going to blog it right now, instead I'm going to try each and every one of them and I'm going to blog them while the nightmare is fresh in my mind. The first one I'm going to try is called Beat It, 'nuff said.

Newsflash! AllyMcBeal is thinking of doing a FunRun and was wondering if I was going this Friday or not, knowing even walking she'll kick my ass on coronary hill. I tell her that I've been placed in this gym to make others look good which brings a smile and Bubbles might tag along as Ally's walking buddy. Ally has to walk for a few weeks until well enough to resume running. I bet if I can make it she and Bubbles will bring water balloons as motivational aids.

Will I go? I'm not sure - Saturday morning we leave for LA with my kids for Spring Break.

Bubbles introduces me to the rowing machine - I will get to play with that on a different cardio workout.

Then I get introduced to a new form of RackRun by Bubbles. You start at the highest weight with three reps, then go down a weight but increase the reps to four, etc. but you do pulses also. So you do three full curls (or hammers, or whatever) then three 'pulses' where you bring the weight up halfway (elbows at ninety degrees) fast. They destroy the bicep's will to live. Proceed to the next down the line.

I did one run like that, and then one regular run the way IronMan and goodMood showed me. While I was trying the run Kojak (thanks Kojak!) gave me a real pointer about staggering my feet while doing the curls. It stopped me from using my back pretty much at all!

RackRuns are great!

Time for ABS - YAY, OH YAY!

Bubbles didn't do much with the ball today (bows head in silent gratitude) and I lasted a bit longer, I also made a startling discovery! It's ALL ABOUT THE BELLY BUTTON!

mmhmm - who knew?

Unfortunately I'm still an 'innie' but I'm working on that. Here's the thing though, no matter what terrible ordeal you're going through in ABS (or walking for that matter) you want to, "pull the belly button into the spine" to put it in Bubbles' parlance. When I started doing that (no matter what else) the searing pain in my lower back ABATED and I could last longer on some of the things she was trying to have us do.

Go figure!

Next it's off to the doc. I actually have two docs, both whom I loveth. They keep a rather sharp eye on me when needed and I like them a lot as people. Anyway, I've given one of them the moniker, the dread doctor [Dr's Last Name] for various reason's that I'm not gonna go into. I'm excited to see the dreadDoctor, the last time she saw me I was a wreck, having not embarked on the path of Lactic Acid Righteousness! yet. Now I'm less wrecky!

First I'm shown to the scale by nurse prudishPants. She got that moniker because she really wasn't interested in debating exactly how much of my clothing I could remove at the scales. She could care less that I was out to wow the dreadDoctor with my weight loss and just wanted to move things along, allowing me to remove my coat but not my pants, sigh.

Then I'm escorted into this room where she takes my blood pressure and I finally get a smile when I ask her about the hope diamond she has on her left hand. She's getting married in September and I wished her all the best. She leaves and I don't wait long before I hear a quiet tap on the door.

The dreadDoctor enters and is looking great and in good spirits! I comment on this and we joke around a bit while she schedules some blood work (the dreadDoctor NEVER passes on a opportunity for a good bleeding!) and then she allows for whine time where I point out the various things that are ailing me.

I give her both barrels; telling her about my knee and my treacherous coccyx while introducing a slight quaver to my voice and a hint of lower lip quivering, a technique I learned from my daughter. The dreadDocter also has daughters however and I don't think she bought my Oscar worthy performance.

She starts poking around my knee and tries pulling my pants over it for a better look. That doesn't work, I figure she just wants to check out my thighs, I'm growing increasingly proud of my muscular thighs that Bubbles built and I can understand her curiosity, they are starting to approach magnificence! She pretends to ignore my dazzling thighs while poking around my knee, then she checked out the coccyx which was a little embarrassing since I've done very little gluteus maximus work. Finally she pronounces that I have tendinitis in the knee and what she's about to prescribe should clear up both it and the coccyx which she thinks is inflamed because I am just too self centered to buy a granny seat for my bike.

This wonder drug bears the street name of ULTRA-MEGA-IBUPROFEN (without the upset tummy feeling). Prescription only. So I take one a day for thirty days and all should be well.

While all this was going on I learned the following cool things about the dreadDoctor. She's a swimmer who can be roped into a triathlon event if you ask real pretty and need a swimmer. She gets her yucks by jumping off the side of barges in Lake Erie and swimming one mile to shore before her flesh dissolves or she grows a third eye (sorry, I remember the Lake Erie of old :-)). In short, she rockeths!

She was done with me, looking frankly in my eyes, she asks, "So how are you feeling?"

Grinning ear to ear I reply, "I feel GREAT!"

I owe that feeling to too many to name, but you know who you are :-)