Muscles Turned Rusty

After almost 2 months of absence from gym, I finally took the step to go today, with the hope of regaining my previous good habit of regular exercise. Yet it was not the main reason that spurred me to go this evening. My main reason was to clarify & settle some billing issues with the staff at the front desk.

The experience of clarifying these billing issues seemed very familiar to me, coz I vividly remember tackling such billing & crediting matters when I was previously working at StarHub. This was a tough area for me, coz I just find it difficult to visualize monthly billing cycles, based on dates & other situational factors.

Strangely, being good at mathematics in secondary school doesn’t mean that I was good at numbers when it comes to finance & figures. Even during the time back at StarHub, I could spend an entire full work day trying to figure out how much to credit & how much to bill, just for a handful of circuits. Perhaps dealing with numbers really isn’t my strong point.

After settling the billing issues, Rebecca & I changed, stretched & began our cardio workout. I had planned to do two short 30 min sessions, exercising with a different cardio machine for each of the 30 minutes… but in the end, I only managed to exercise for only 30 full minutes. Having not exercised for almost 2 months just made my muscles all rusty!

I did my 30 min cardio workout on the ‘Stair-Master’. Setting the difficulty to level 12 of 20, I began climbing step after step on that machine. It was tough in the beginning & it got tougher as it went on.

At the 25 min mark, I had no choice but to reduce the difficulty level to 10, coz I was already literally dragging my legs up each step. Even after decreasing to level 10, I still struggled to keep pace with the moving steps.

I sweated like a flowing river. Believe me, it’s true… in an air-con gym, sweat was forming on my upper arms & sweat from my lower arm started dripping onto the side handles where I was holding onto. Over the last 5 minutes, the handles were just wet with the sweat dripping from my arm… making it so slippery that I couldn’t really get a firm grip! It was a trying time, as I grit my teeth & endured till the end of the full 30 minutes.

I couldn’t do any more cardio workout. I was in such agony… having climbed 160 storeys & burning 330.4 calories in just 30 minutes! Rebecca also did 30 min on the Stair-Master & she only burned 203 calories… so go figure my intensity.

Climbing 160 storeys continuously upwards is really no joke… the closest I ever felt to being this tired in my legs was when I was training every Sunday for my church Kota Kinabalu mountain expedition trip. During our first training day, we climbed 300 storeys. I won’t forget that day… it made the invention of the lift just magnificent in our eyes.

After showering, Rebecca & I had a simple dinner at Pastamania. This is our first time eating together at Pastamania… & the food tasted quite nice. It was still raining when we left Bugis, just like it has been so faithfully raining, each & every day… but I thank God that we enjoyed the time together.