Week 33 - Away on Holiday!

Monday

Another bad Monday. I woke up feeling absolutely terrible. I spent the day tending to my eBay account. In the evening I managed to make dinner for the family before collapsing on the couch with a beer.

No exercise, no junkfood, beers

Tuesday

With the knee still aching, I have had to adapt my weight training to focus on upper body strength only. In other words, I've temporarily stopped performing squats and dead-lifts.

My training programme currently looks like this:

Dumbbell side raises at 5.5kg

Dumbbell front raises at 5.5kg

Seated dumbbell curls at 11.5kg

Barbell curls at 20.5kg

Barbell shrugs at 56kg

Military press for 29kg and 30 kg

All exercises are performed for three sets of between 10 and 12 repetitions (i.e. between 30 and 36 reps each).  As a warm up, I always do 100 triceps dips, 100 straight leg raises and 100 press ups. All exercises, including the warm up, must be completed in one hour or less. The weights are only small but this is to take into account that my right arm has never fully recovered from the injury from 4 years ago. At least it keeps this old man moving.

So anyway, I did my exercises, did loads of ironing, put some stuff for sale on eBay, and Lucy made a wonderful dinner.

Weight training, no junkfood, no alcohol

Wednesday

Today was almost exactly the same as yesterday! The only difference was that it was my turn to cook. So I made a stir fry.

Weight training, no junkfood, no alcohol.

Thursday

Another carbon copy day of eBay sales and weight training. The only difference was in the evening when I let myself have a beer in the last of the sunshine in our back garden. Lucy noted that it was probably the first time I'd been outside since Sunday!

Weight training, no junkfood, 3 beers

Friday

I drove Mouse in to work because it was raining and she's very delicate and didn't want to walk and was about to waste money on a taxi.

Then I stayed in all day putting stuff on eBay. In the evening, I went along to the Friday night Karate session with Sensei Ronnie Christopher. It was almost exactly what I had hoped it would be - a technical kata lesson with the focus on the five black belt kata: Empi, Bassai Dai, Kanku Dai, Jion and Hangetsu. I found that I still have loads of work to do in these kata, particularly Jion and Empi, the two kata where I made mistakes this evening. In future, I intend to arrive 10 minutes early to Saturday sessions to give myself time to work on these.

I went home in a good mood. Lucy and Dave from next door were round for drinks, but I showed some willpower (for once!) and drank tea while I watched Dave drink my beer!

Dinner, Tour de France, washing up, bed to read Authority by Jeff VanderMeer.

Karate, no junkfood, no alcohol

Saturday

We're away on our holidays!

I woke up at 6am. By 8am I was into a weight training session (still no squats or dead-lifts.)

We set off for our holiday at 10:30. 

We stopped off at Bury St.Edmunds to admire the modern cathedral there. We had lunch at the cathedral too. The cathedral was in the middle of a nice busy shopping centre - it reminded me of Solihull! 

Then on to Felixstowe. 

The place reminds me very much of Tywyn: It has fantastic sea views, a pebble beach, and the kind of people who you would expect to find being kicked out of a pub in Erdington (I was born and raised in Erdington!)

Unloading the car was a bit of an effort - up and down steep steps with heavy bags did my knee no good. After that, Lucy and I headed off for a walk along the promenade. I saw that some sort of cycling event was being organised. I asked a couple of the organisers - they explained that it was the Felixstowe Triathlon due to take place in the morning.

We arrived at a bar on the pier. The people there were very rough and ready (think track suits and vapes) but the place had some lovely views from the outside seating area. The wind was ferocious but it was still a relatively warm evening. 

Then back home for one of Lucy's lovely pasta dishes and, of course, a couple more ales.

Weight training, no junkfood, 3 beers.

Sunday

I went to watch the triathletes this monring. Our apartment is directly opposite the race HQ so I could watch athletes transistion form the pool to the bike and then the bike to the run. They looked like some fit, determined amateurs of all shapes and ages. A lot of people were riding with flat pedals. There were even a few mountain bikes and hybrids. Not many tri-bars. Maybe I'd got up too late to see the elite athletes? Anyway, they were all fitter than me. I don't know how many laps of the pool they had to swim, but I'm sure it was more than I could manage.

After brekkie, we walked down to Landford Fort which involved a lovely route along the promenade and then through a nature reserve full of nesting birds and dogs on leads. The fort itself was a lot bigger than I'd expected and staffed by very friendly and enthusiastic volunteers. They had loads of old stuff for us to look at, and we were each issued with a walkie-talkie type device that spoke information to us as we walked around.

My next bike?

We also walked down to where the foot ferry takes people over to Harwich. We were told that the ferry wasn't running because of the high winds. We then took a walk around the rest of the nature reserve before heading back for some lunch.

I made a beef chilli for later. Then we strolled north, up to a place called the Fludyers Hotel. This is where Edward 8th came to visit Wallis Spencer, or something. I don't know, it's a history thing. You'd have to ask Lucy. I had a pint, that's the important thing.

We walked back. Lucy had done more than 20,000 steps today! I had managed almost 18,000. I had a few more beers and then served up the beef chilli. We curled up in front of the TV.

No exercise, no junkfood, 4 beers