u/bookish-hooker

I’ve been doing battle ropes (3x30s) and jumping jacks (AMRAP x3, last session was 130 jacks split into 50, 40, and 40) as a “fun” finisher at the end of each of my lifting sessions.

What (if anything) do you do as a finisher? I’m looking for other options or suggestions for similar things, please.

Or should I wait until I can “comfortably” do 150 jacks before switching it up?

Yesterday, I trained back and biceps in the gym, and finished my hour-long workout with 90 seconds of battle ropes, and 100 jumping jacks.

(I’ve lost and kept off 30kg for five years, as an fyi, and lift 3-4x a week, and swim 2x a week)

I spent today doing all those little life-admin things that pile up. I went to the eye doctor for an eye test, picked out new glasses, inquired at a local music shop about piano lessons, got some photos taken for my new passport, and made a dentist appointment. All in all, I got 12000 steps today.

When we got to the pool, I was feeling fatigued, and only set myself a goal of 1000metres (or 20 laps). The pool was empty when we arrived, and we had the whole “medium” lane to ourselves for a while.

I put on my goggles (that make me look even more myopic than I usually do), and started doing my approximation of a backstroke, likely incorrectly. I mark my laps using a little plastic row marker clipped to my water bottle, kept next to the shallow end.

My pale thighs wobbling like undercooked custard in a water bath as I tried my best to flutter my feet. My arms taking big bites, pulling me through the water like the paddles on a steamboat, the water creating a small vibratory “thwump” at the nadir of my stroke, down by my hips. I tried to keep a rhythm by counting 1-2-3-4 in my head as my arms went back and down and forward and up again.

I used the rafters on the ceiling as a guide to keep me mostly-straight, and tried to keep track of where I was on my length by landmarking the missing bolts in the roof or the shiny ladder in my periphery.

I apologized to all my fellow “medium-laners” that I’d end up next to in the shallow end, explaining that I was too fast for the slow lane, and thought I might be too slow for the medium lane.

I kept swimming my laps, doing one or two in a clumsy, inefficient attempt at breaststroke, puffing and snorting like an asthmatic walrus the whole time. I definitely prefer backstroke.

I kept my arms pulling through the water, buffeted by the waves made by those machine-people in the fast lane, the “thwump” of my stroke reminding me a slow heartbeat.

I ran my tongue over the small chip in my tooth, where I’d miscalculated during my weekend swim and banged my head on the wall of the pool and clacked my teeth together like a cartoon skeleton. I suppose that happens when you get too into the zen of it and stop paying attention to where in the pool you are.

At around lap 27, someone in the fast lane created a larger-than-expected wave, just as I was inhaling, and I end up coughing my way through the last half of my length, taking a minute to splutter and catch my breath in the deep end before continuing.

I’d only aimed for 50 lengths in this swim, thinking I’d swim for an hour or so, trying to just move my body and flush some of the lactic acid from my muscles from my workout yesterday.

I got to 60 lengths at about an hour, and figured “what the hell, I’ll go for a mile” I began tiredly slogging through the last few lengths, my body fighting the water, my breath catching, and my heart pounding in my ears, each pull of my arms and flutter of my feet getting me closer to my longest swim ever.

I don’t know why I’ve decided to share this, but I have. And maybe if I can do a thing even when I’m already fatigued, you can do a thing too.

I dunno.

Much love, darlings.

Hey all! In my neighbourhood there’s an abundance of rosehips and hawthorn. How would you go about harvesting and processing them? Thanks!

(I have a freezer, know how to make jams and jellies, and have been thinking of getting a dehydrator)

I have been swimming with my husband at our local pool 1-3x a week for a few months now.

Today I swam 60 lengths/30laps/1500m in 1:10:00.

It’s slow, but I did it.