Torture Chambers in Disguise

Apologies, I have been a bad blogger... but I've also been busy and I can't show you the stuff yet, so you will just have to be a little patient. Speaking of patients, I was nearly one in the local hospital yesterday.... I have a new neighbour, well, she is my next door neighbour's neighbour, so 2 down from me, just in from Canada and lo and behold, she is a fitness trainer!! Eeeeek, I am thinking maybe I should put in to be moved further from her influence...

So yesterday I get a call from neighbour 1, Odelia, who says she has been roped in to accompany Neighbour 2, Bridget the Fitness Trainer, (who will now be know as Efty) to the gym.... and to keep things fair, she decided that this meant I should also be roped in to endure and grin about it! Don't you just love people that need to share? Now, there are just a couple of inequalities in this plan... they are both 20 years my junior and they are slim........ you know, that horrid size 6 slim???

Like the idiot I am.... and having put on a few pounds over the festive period, I think this may be a good idea, a personal trainer and company at the gym!! I'm the one nearest the gym buliding so its my job to go and check it out and see if its empty.... so I saunter over and peer into the gloomy unlit room filled with machines of every description and return to inform them that its empty, so they say 'get changed' and we'll head over there for a work-out. Oh.... you mean me walking over and back again (all of 100 metres in total) wasn't my part completed?

A pair of leggings and one of DH's t-shirts (very large, very baggy, very long and hiding a multitude of sins and other unmentionable stuff) later I join the 2 skinny peeps in the gym. Did I mention that Efty is a fitness trainer? I think she went to the SS school of gymnasts, because she really takes this stuff seriously!! We line up to be weighed, I politely let them go first and I think they broke the scales because it was definitely sending out some weird uncalibrated reading when I got on it.... and who the heck can work out kilograms anyways?

Then she points us in the direction of the treadmills for some walking... well, that cheered me up, walking is no problem, I do walking all the time!! I clamber on board and Efty pushes buttons and enters the uncalibrated weight in kilos and adjusts this and that and then pushes start.... well, all I can say is that it was a bloody good job I had hold of the handle bars!! I seem to recall her mentioning something about starting out easy till she sees what shape we are in.... but I was hanging on for dear life and trying to make my little legs move fast enough so that I didn't just scoot right off the end in an undignified heap.... Odie is on the treadmill next to mine and she was fine, and not even hanging on, just swinging her arms with her steps.... show-off!

After about an hour (Efty insisted it was 5 minutes), she makes us go faster and increases the incline, I'm still hanging onto those handle bars like its the last designer outfit at half price in the shop in my size.... another couple of hours pass and Efty just keeps increasing the speed and the incline so now my little legs are climbing a vertical mountain at break neck speed and I even manage to notice that my heart rate is 122 - it seemed a little high but I was pretty happy to see I still had one, then I noticed I had burned 32 calories.... what? 32 calories? I mean, that's like the sugar in one cup of coffee... two bites of a KitKat.... this torture only burned 2 bites of a KitKat??? and then... the treadmill started to slow down, bless its cotton socks, it was cooling me off and returning to a normal flat level and sluggish speed! In my head I am singing that old Gloria Gaynor song "I Will Survive" - but only in my head... not enough air in my lungs to do anything else.... and then this voice says... and now we do it all again and build up the speed a bit...



After the treadmill I figured we would have a drink of water and head back home... but Efty looks at me oddly and says, no, that was the warm up, now we lift weights!

I have some of those at home in Scotland... they are 1.5 lbs and I use them as door stops.... the smallest ones in this gym (obviously kitted out for the opposite sex) weigh 5 lbs.... and Efty, the dear girl, hands me two of them!! Odie picks out two 10 pounds ones (told you she was a show-off) and we start working on our upper arms... my main work-out was keeping them from crushing me into mash potato.... it was a major achievement just to keep them off my chest!

Then its the machines of torture... I decided that if I was to survive this ordeal that I had better start taking the initiative and headed for anything that had a seat... figured if I was sitting down, life couldn't be too bad!! Hohum.... sitting down or not, those machines did their worst... I sat in one that worked your something or other muscles... you had to pull these HUGE pads to meet in front of you... which would have been fine if they would move... I am trying my hardest and nothing is happening.... Efty comes along and says maybe the weight is too heavy... it was only on 4 and even I had the grace to look embarrassed... so we took one off, still couldn't budge it, took another one off.... nope, still couldn't budge it even a smidgeon.... Efty removes all the weights and looks at me.... LOL.... nope, not a inch.... I figure the machine (like the scales) is broken... so Efty gets on it and it fixed itself... she had no problem moving them at all!!

I did find one machine that was my friend.... this one!! It had a seat (a definitel bonus) and I could work that big bar up and down no problem at all!! I have found my forte!!

An hour and 20 minutes later we decide we have had a adequate work-out so I head for the scales and I had lost 10 grams.... that with the 32 calories I burned on the treadmill really doesn't seem like a just reward for my efforts so I went home and ate a whole KitKat!!

Odie and Efty left me at my house with the words... so we'll do it all again tomorrow.........