May 100 words

I finished writing 100 words a day for May. This month it focuses entirely on the trip. You'll find some of it repetitive of things I've blogged about here, but some of it different.

I returned to a hot, stuffy apartment last night, dug out fans and placed them strategically.

There are still many photos to process and upload to Flickr. I did a few more this morning. This shot is another from the first afternoon, taken along Highway 17 between Sault Ste. Marie and Wawa, the eastern shore of Lake Superior. It turned out to be one of the prettiest parts of the trip.

Muscles

I haven't forgotten about daily exercise. I'll write more about the trip soon, but for the moment I need to catch up on the 6 changes.

I intended to go for a 30-minute walk every day during the trip. I might have missed once. On the other hand, only two of those walks were aerobic. Ideally, I want to do 30 minutes of exercise and break a sweat once a day, but if I can hit five days a week by the end of June, I'll be happy.

Some days I'll do a semi-aerobic weight routine. I hadn't yet mentioned any specific goals about that here.

But all day today I thought about coming home and lifting weights. I like lifting weights. I stopped doing so in November, mostly due to concern about a pain in my shoulder. I still get that sometimes, but it seems to be more related to my sleeping position, not exertion.

I came home and puttered on the computer for a little while, but finally got around to the weights between 7:10 and 7:40. Work has required considerable upper body strength the past few months, so I was happy to find I could pretty well pick up where I left off in November (although we'll see how much pain I feel later).

For most muscle groups, my routine is supposed to go like this: I do three sets of each exercise, 12 reps at the lightest weight (say 10 pounds per hand), then 10 reps at medium weight (15 pounds), and finally 8 reps at the heaviest weight (20 pounds), resting only about 15 seconds between sets to keep the exercise semi-aerobic. I do three sets of three different exercises for each muscle group, then move onto another muscle group. For abs I just do 30 or more repeats of four different exercises.

I had hoped to do abs, triceps, biceps, and chest on day one; abs, shoulders, back and thighs on day two. That way I could work all muscle groups twice a week.

Tonight I found that in a half hour I only had time to do two exercises for each muscle group (triceps, biceps and chest) plus the entire abs routine. More than 30 minutes is too onerous, so I must decide whether to stick with just two exercises per muscle group, or do fewer muscle groups per day. Abdominal exercises are the ones I like least, but those are muscles I'm most concerned about, it's okay to work them as often as possible, and it helps me warm up and break a sweat; that's why I do them every workout.

Fewer muscle groups would look like this:

• Day 1: abs, triceps, biceps
• Day 2: abs, chest, back
• Day 3: abs, shoulders, thighs.

I would have to work out six days to get through everything twice a week. That probably isn't going to happen, because I want to substitute walking twice a week (my doctor and therapist were more interested in that).

No need to decide right now. I'm just thinking aloud, or rather, ablog.

I like the glow the exertion has left in my muscles. I also remember last year after a few days the glow began leading to sexual arousal. It's fun to feel healthy body things happening.

My plan for the next few days is to walk to OOTS on Tuesday and lift weights after work on Wednesday and Thursday.

The picture was taken on a suspension bridge near French River the first day of our trip.