No gym today

I had other things to do today so I gave the gym a miss.

That said, I've not been entirely indolent, as I spent three hours gardening. I much prefer this kind of physical exercise to gymming, because you can see the fruits of your labours fairly easily, and you can certainly feel them! And you use differnet families of muscles in a different way (digging in particular) so despite daily doses of resistance work at ther gym over the last several months, I still feel utterly shattered.

Until a year ago, I actually considered gym-going rather strange, given the opportunities we all have in our daily lives for physical activity. In particular, I was seriosuly amused by the need for a car park at an old gym I used to walk past fairly often: if people walked or cycled there, they'd save time on at least one workout element, and perhaps even the need for attending the gym altogether!

That said, the typical British inclement weather does make trudging to gyms on foot or bicycle rather disheartening, although I must admit that sitting on an exercise bike watching drenched passers-by on several days last week did provide an element of schadenfreude.

Talking of exercise bikes, not content with my gardening efforts, I've just come back from a 20 minute cycle ride - I honestly don't recall when I last took my bike out further than the bottom of our road or used the gears (they were literally rusty!).

It's interesting though that the effort required on even a moderate upward hill in the real world is considerably greater than that on an exercise bike in a gym. That said, there are few sensations which make one feel free quite as much as pedalling down a hill at full speed and feeling the wind tearing past!

The forecasters have promised us that the rest of the week should be similar to today (dry and sunny though not especially hot) so I might try something I've not done since I was a kid and cycle all the way to gym and back tomorrow! (it shouldn't take me much longer than public transport and I should save myself the warmup and cooldown on the gym bikes!) I am however, dreading the three rather steep hills I have go up and down to get there (and what's worse, get back!)