HB COLD

I am old, bald and grossly out of shape. At least these were the thoughts running through my head during my first step back to fitness. Today I went to the Helsinki University gym and out of the 100 or so people (kids) (extremely young, in shape, kids) I had to have been one of the five or six, okay maybe one of the ten oldest people in the gym. And to make matters worse, I hadn't done a damn thing physically since August. Well, one game of basketball and the move to Helsinki, but that's it. So today was the first step. 30 situps and I was shaking. 5 sets of 5 bench presses with gradually decreasing weight and I will be sore until next week. And then the hard stuff, 10 minutes on the rowing machine and then another 10 on the elliptical trainer. I thought I was going to throw up or pass out when I left the gym. And just six months ago this was simply a warm-up to the real workout. Why does it take so long to get into shape and then so short a time to fall way out of shape.

And I don't know what's worse, the gym in Joensuu where everyone was older and in excellent, body-builder type shape or here, where everyone is younger and in body-builder type shape. Either way, I think I am going to figure out the time when the graduate students exercise. I'm sure I could take some of them, in a couple of weeks at least.

Great news! Karoliina and I are going spinning tomorrow. This could very well be my last post.