Easy now...

Let's not shock the body with enormous amounts of weightlifting after two weeks of resting from any gym-related activities!

Not that I ever do enormous amounts of weightlifting. The stronger bottom half of my body usually points a finger at the top half and laughs at how weak it is as it struggles to lift even 5 kg on the shoulder machine. Lemme help you with your maths: that's 2,5 kg per shoulder. Go ahead. Laugh away. Shame my shoulders into trying harder, because talking them into getting stronger hasn't helped so far.

One thing you can never accuse me of is lack of discipline (except when it comes to studying. Or cleaning. Or cooking. Yeah, alright, I'm a pretty undisciplined person, except when it comes to exercising). If I am going to succeed on the road to Lapland Ultra, I need to visit the gym more often. So I booked myself into an early morning core group session and dragged myself out of bed at 05.40. After two weeks of getting up at 07.00 at the earliest, I expected my body to react violently to this turn of events. Maybe I was going to throw up as soon as the alarm went off? Punch myself in the face? Fall asleep while eating a banana?

No use complaining when you got a job to do

I bet you're thinking that getting up so early is hardcore. Let me impress you even further by telling you how the night had been before the alarm went off. We live in a house made of wood. Our upstairs neighbours are generally quiet and, really, we can't complain. Except they're up and walking marathons in the middle of the night, and in a wooden house, that's an impossible sound to ignore. Imagine elephants doing their own interpretation of STOMP's numbers. At one in the morning. Every. Single. Night. When they start their nightly pilgrimage, I've usually already gotten a few hours' sleep, so once I am awake, I lie there awake for a little while trying to convince my body that, no, 3 hours of sleep is not enough, go back to sleep. Last night I had just succeeded in doing that, when an incredibly loud BANG! made me jump out of bed and reach for the phone to call for an ambulance, because I honestly believed I was having a heart attack. The more *ahem* gravitationally inclined one of the two felines calling the shots around this house had clumsily tried to jump onto one of the two folding IKEA guest beds that we have stored behind our bedroom door, and missed, making it tip over, yet somehow avoiding getting turned into cat marmalade in the process. Cats really do have nine lives.

It took me a while to get my heart rate back to normal but, after checking to make sure both cats were ok, I eventually went back to sleep, a fitful sleep filled with nightmares of death-by-IKEA-bed scenarios and floating bald cat heads. 3 hours later the alarm discreetly informed me that it was time to get up by letting off a loud, incessant MEEP MEEP MEEP.

Nothing to do but put on my running clothes, run to the gym and do the stupid core session. And, since I was already at the gym, I followed it up with a quick round at the gym machines. Yep, my shoulders are still struggling to lift 2,5 kg. Yep, it's still really boring to train at the gym. But good thing I didn't shock my body with any excess exercise or anything, right?