At this time of the morning?

Having had a miserable session last time in the gym I was a little wary of what the next session would bring.

Personal circumstances at home meant that I was obliged to go before work and the thought filled me with dread. I got out of bed at 6:35 and by 6:50 I was half way through my 6m30s on the treadmill at 10Km/h. The gym was almost empty with two young women taking advantage of the peace and quiet to get some work done. I filled my water bottle and got on the cross trainer. This atmosphere obviously suited me too as I didn't feel laboured while running until I hit the 5m30s mark. That's a huge improvement on my previous attempts when I felt out of my skin at 3m45s.

Now the cross trainer is fast becoming my favourite piece of gym equipment. It gives me a great cv workout and is low impact for my hips, knees and ankles, all of which suffered injury at some point last season. I pushed the level of workout up to 13/25 to burn a bit more fat (the whole point of the cv workout) and I completed 12 minutes before moving to the bike where I also managed 12 minutes.

I noticed on the bike that I couldn't seem to pedal much faster than 80rpm and this wasn't working my heart enough (average bpm of only 143) so I upped the level to 6/25 but this hurt my knees so I dropped to 5/25 and completed with an average of 144bpm. I have decided that I need to re-build some upper body muscle to help burn the fat while I'm not exercising so I completed 10 minutes on the weights machine before running through 75 advanced sit-ups.

Now sit-ups are not my favourite free form exercise and today added to that. Just as I was finishing my cross body sit-up (right elbow to left knee) I got an excruciating pain low down on the right side of my torso, roughly where the appendix is situated. I thought at first that I'd gotten a hernia as the muscle was rigid but after around 5 minutes it subsided and I realised it was just cramp.

So the work-out finished on a low but overall my fitness has taken a leap forward and the fat is still burning off. This supplemented by better muscle toning makes me look better, in and out of clothes (according to my wife).