Weekends. Cardio, personal time, and family time

On weekends, I do not always do anything.  I try to fit something in, mainly because if I do not I end up feeling a bit anxious.  This morning, we did not have any real plans, so I biked for half an hour.  I feel less guilty doing this:  it takes less time than running out to the Y.  But I also don't always like doing it:  I can hear what is going on upstairs and if there is any arguing (which there will be), I feel guilty about not attending to it.  I should not feel guilty:  Jason is more than able to handle everything.  But nonetheless, I feel guilty for doing something for 'me' and leaving Jason to deal with the chaos.

I tell myself that it is only half an hour and it is important to have some 'me' time.  I try to pay him back:  after I got back from getting my hair cut, I spent some quality time with Zev and Jason was able to take a bit of a nap.  Later we all went to the Inside Playground and managed some total family time.  That was nice.

Still, I feel as if there are not enough hours in the day.  Which I suppose is normal for any full-time working mother of three young children.  I constantly feel as if I am 'catching up'.

Tomorrow we are going to a BBQ.  I should take a full rest day and I will try.

Saturday, March 3rd

Jason is at a conference all day.  I played with the idea of just biking during the girls' nap, but I wanted to go to the Y and do something else.  And I don't like biking when there is no one to watch Zev (even though he's perfectly fine on his own).  Since the Y has childcare in the morning, I decided instead to head out there and let the kids play in the childcare center while I did a little workout.

Half an hour on the treadmill, 1 min/2 min intervals at roughly 3.5 mph and 5.3 mph.  It ended up being almost 2.25 miles total.  Since I really don't like running, I thought this was pretty decent.  It isn't that I can't do it, rather I find it boring.  But I do think running can be a good exercise to have in a plan, so doing it once a week is a good compromise.  Done and done.

Tomorrow will either be a little biking or a day of rest.  Depends on what the day brings.

Saturday, February 25th

I was unsure as to what to do this morning.  I do not lift on the weekends and didn't want to bike.  I ended up going to the gym for a change of scenery and thought I would figure it out when I got there.  I managed:

Intervals on the treadmill:  1 min at around 3.5 mph and 1 min around 5.8-6.2 mph.  Did 10 of those, and with warm-up and cool-down that was around 23 minutes.

Rowing:  2000 meters, which was about 12 minutes

Then I went to the annex part of the gym and did a little 'core' work:

db swings:
10x20
10x25
10x25

Planks:
30 sec
30 sec
30 sec

back extension
bwx10
bwx10
bwx10

Was going to do more, but I figured that would be enough.  Total time was around 45 minutes or so.

Observations:  I'm actually in better cardiovascular shape than I think I am.  I could have gone longer on the treadmill, but I just find it boring and can't stand to do it for very long. I guess the way to increase my fitness there is to increase the speed on my intervals.  In general I don't like running and don't find the bodies of runners to be appealing:  thin, but very little muscle.  Which is why I'm looking into more functional fitness for my cardiovascular work:  intervals, bw training, etc.

Plans for today:  not sure yet.  I need to go to the library to return some books and I need to pay the daycare.  I also need to buy my sister a baby shower gift, but I think I'll just do that online.  I want to clean out some of the basement and try to sell some things, too.

Thursday, February 23

Currently I am on a three day lifting week.  This is down from four days.  I had been experiencing a lot of joint pain, and after changing some medications, still experienced the pain.  After decreasing from four to three days of heavy lifting, the joint pain has disappeared.  I now am lifting M, W, F, which means today is a cardio day.

Since my husband and children left early this morning for the airport, I did some quick cardio on my stationary bike in our basement.  Half an hour of biking.  I like to do more than that on cardio days, so I will probably do something else later today.

I want to also find other methods of cardio to do other than the stationary biking.  This will be a goal for next few days:  to come up with some other cardiovascular activity for my 'cardio' days.