This ain't no strip poker!

Wednesday morning I awoke with reminders of the previous days exertions. Not enough to make me weep, but enough to remind me I'd recently done some activities my body had not done for some time, if ever. Foolishly I had asked Tracey for a quick ab-centric session to do on my 'off' mornings. Her eyes lit up and she began planning some quick exercises to do before heading off to work.

Now, one of my categories in the 20 Week Challenge is abdominals. I have one big floppy ab, and it needs to be reduced and then multiplied. I'm tall, so core strength is going to help my back as well. So Tracey had me do a short floor session, making my abs burn while she laughed at my inability to do more than a few sit-ups. It was over pretty quickly, and proved just how poor my abdominals really are. Very bad indeed. Scope for improvement - Huge!

And so Thursday morning rolls around. Another late night beforehand and high sugars in the morning was again the perfect preparation for doing some jerks. It was raining outside, so the silly-buggers up & down the driveway for a warm-up was replaced with leaping around inside instead. Once I was nice and toasty, slightly more hydrated, and ready to do some weights, Tracey pulled out a deck of cards. For a moment I thought strip poker!! However, the next words from her mouth were "whipped by marshmallows huh?" I knew I was in trouble now.

Each suit on the cards was a different activity (star jumps, sit ups, hamstring things and lunges) with a bonus for the joker (burpies) and after watching her inexpertly shuffle the cards, she started dealing. Lunges and star jumps featured quite often initially, and the real problem was getting 4 cards of the same suite one after the other (lunges!) and after a short time I was getting tired, and could not do sit ups any more (swapped for crunchies, yea, thanks) but managed to get through about half the deck, including the joker (you jingly bastard!)

Some stretches, more water, a change of shoes, then on the bike and to work. It was still pouring with rain, but the rain on my skin was cooling and refreshing. 

Am I feeling fitter yet? No. In fact, some of these exercises have proven to me just how badly out of shape I really am, and that there is a lot of improvement to be made. No rest for the wicked, and I have been very, very wicked.