Late last semester, I joined some friends in bewailing the sad state of our unfit bodies, withered away with advancing years.

This semester, we resolved to do something about our advancing decrepitude. We're meeting at the campus athletics building thrice a week. Weekends are lap swimming, but Tuesdays and Thursdays we go to the fitness room: free-weights, cardio machines, and other similar exercise gear.

Of the four of us, I'm the one with recent experience in formal workout leadership, so I've been providing the plan. First day we did the Marine Corps Daily 15, which is a series of calisthenics that take very little room. I had to back the numbers down, doing about a third the reps that I used to. I was good for more, but two of the guys in the group are far behind me in fitness, and I don't want to give poor Jack a heart attack.

The second time we did crunches and POWs; the POW is an upper-body workout of supreme unpleasantness. It got it's name from the impression among the enlisted that no enemy torture could be as bad as this exercise. I kind of like them, in a Stockholm Syndrome way. Then we ran for a while, or rather, I ran while the other guys walked.

It's kind of a problem. I want to work out together, but I'm at a higher fitness level. (Not that my level is all that high, mind you.) My plan is to get them up so we can run together.

Now I've got to head off to our fourth session, and I'm out of new ideas. Maybe we'll just do the Daily 15 again.

UPDATE: We decided to do weightlifting today. I've not done any of that since high school, so the other guys took over the daily operational plan. It worked out well, I'm quite sore. I also went for a run afterwards, which the other guys took a pass on.

I need to dig out my pace-counting beads. My university's arena has a 1/6 mile indoor running track, but I keep losing count when the lap number gets into the teens. A pace-counter, which is kind of like an abacus bracelet, would let me keep track.

Posted by: Boviate at 01:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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