Lots of new exercise-type experiences to report this morning. On Friday I went along to the body-pump class at lunch time that I told you about. This class involves holding weights while doing various lunges, squats and arm exercises. Luckily for me the instructor had a cold so had cut the class down to half an hour.
Actually, that makes it sound worse than it was: the upper body and back stuff was all fine (probably because I had been assigned the teeniest weights ever as a beginner) but one track involved holding a crouching position which made my quads go all wibbly. Just as the lactic acid was building up to intolerable levels and I was about to keel over the instructor would shout 'Ok, team, just 10 more seconds!'. By the time you were actually allowed to stand the flood of blood back to my thighs was blissful. And then she made us do it all again. Twice!
So after that the obvious thing to do was to recruit Al to make me go hill running on Saturday. I'd envisioned a potter round Queen's Drive taking about half an hour, but the bastard drove us to the Dunddingston car park (yes! the one at the bottom of the hill! What's wrong with this picture?) and then warm up by slogging up the hundred plus steps to the top loch. I know there are over a hundred because I counted and then lost count when I had to start concentrating on not throwing up instead. So I was knackered before we even got the the starting point.
OK, here is a map to illustrate exactly what we did. Having gone up the steps (the orange line from the Duddingston Village car park), we climbed up the steep side of Crow Hill. By this point I was walking but still managing to keep up with Al who was running. This is one of the bizarre things about hill running. Then down the dip and back up again to the peak of Arthur's Seat. Then a scramble down to Piper's Walk - is it just me or is it wrong to have to use your hands on a run? At this point Al got a stitch, ha ha! And it was downhill so I ran ahead and then waited, stretching nonchalantly at the big boulder at the Hawse. The rest of of was not bad at all in fact: along the top of the crags and back through the middle valley to the road and back down to the car.
In all it took us an hour to do not much more than three miles, which I considered pathetic. Despite Al's attempts to explain that it's different with hills, I still consider this walking pace. However, it was a workout for the lungs if nothing else. And I have times to beat: 12 minutes to the top of Crow Hill from the car and 17 minutes to the top of Arthur's Seat.
Sunday would have been a rest day had Al not signed me up to the Santa Run (Father Christmas is dead: long live Santa) in Princes Street gardens. This is a trot twice round the gardens accompanied by 2,000 other people also dressed as Santa/Father Christmas. I was quite taken with the dogs in Santa outfits or with reindeer horns: I know it's wrong to dress up your dog and wouldn't normally approve, but in the circumstances it was acceptably cute. The preponderance of dogs, reindeer, kids, elves and so on made it more of a walk, and at one point as we shuffled past some more sedentary Santas one was heard to remark 'Look out for the competitive Santas!'
Al fought his way past lethargic Santas at the end to claim our medals (yes! medals for walking approximately 500 yards!) and we claimed our own wee elf from his mum and took him to refuel in the German Christmas market, which is exactly like a German Christmas market in Germany. I had the strange Dutch meat product known as frikendel.
The rest of my weekend was spent buying presents and collecting, erecting and decorating a tree. It took ages but does look very smart. I also bought a HUGE roasting tin only to get home and find it wouldn't fit in the oven so had to return it and swap it for one that was merely large. Christmas is, as always, accelerating towards me.
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