Spanner in the works

At TAFE the first class is 2 hours and the lecturer somehow thinks its more productive to work all the way through without any break. I've never experienced anything like that. During High School you can rooms every hour, in University they had a policy of a 10 minute break after 50 minutes of class. Maybe in primary school, where you get a morning tea break and a lunch break only, but you always get time to work together in groups and have a bit of a change in atmosphere. Seriously, after about 75 minutes listening to a teacher rant on I'm not learning anything. Instead of 50+ minutes of my head on the table, zoning out, why not give us 10 minutes to refresh. I'm sure whatever the class needs to cover can do it in 110 minutes rather than 120. Ugh.

And I had 2 group meetings lined up in the 2 hour lunch break. First group decides they want to go to a burger place down the road and have lunch and skip the meeting, and the other group say "what meeting? what research?" Seriously? Pretty frustrating. We have assessments due next week and the week after and its like we haven't even started to look at anything of what to do. (Particularly as they included the induction week as "Week 1" - basically taking a week of us - who learns content when they tell us to pay for parking, where we can smoke, where to get a library card and all that bullshit?)

Anyway, we finally got going and it wasn't as bad as I thought. We've delegated tasks now so at least they can't claim they didn't know what to research. And work called me in for a shift tomorrow morning, so more money is good. Though it did throw a spanner in the works in terms of my gym scheduling.

I go to the gym between 9pm-11pm (to get there, and finish whenever) on the day where I have afternoon starts or the day off. So I'm now working at 9am and thought there's no way I could do this. But I stumbled on the solution accidentally with no thought about it. I was so exhausted that I fell asleep at 7pm and slept to 10pm. Perfect! The time I usually go to the gym and I have 3 hours sleep already up my sleep, so if I return and get 6 hours, I'll be right for work tomorrow. I've done it before, split up my sleep and as long as I get 8-9 hours overall I feel fine. Naps are great!

So I went to the gym and seeing as nobody was there I took the opportunity to do strength training with the weight machines. I hate using them when people are there because I think they'll look at me and judge me for using them when I'm obese (not "huge", but still, not a skinny lil' thang). Or if they think my speed isn't right. Or posture. Or the fact I don't do a set amount of reps, I just do it until my body tells me to stop.

So I'm doing strength training so my HR was low and I couldn't get into cardio later. I think my average HR was 99 BPM when my goal is 130-150 BPM. Based on my "usual" gym sessions and the time taken my HR watch predicted 550 calories and I only did 425 burned. I mean its better than nothing but I need my mojo back. Just remembered! I did half my "rowing machine" distance and was going to do the other half to cool down and I forgot. lol. Bad me :)

But anyway, even with the so-so day studying and my early start, getting in a gym sesh in was really important. I'm treating my workouts like a life chore - something that has to get done rather than an excuse. "Oh, can't do it today, wont get enough sleep" would have been so easy to say and avoid.

I'm really like writing everything down as well. It's a nice debrief. Getting it all out helps me not stress and think about it more. Like writing that I'm self-conscious when I'm at the gym makes me think about why. And even just admitting that I do! I don't think "people are here, don't do strength", I just don't do it. It's good to be aware of the stuff I do.

Good night everyone!

PS. Almost forgot to say I'm my BLC team's biggest loser of the week! I was so proud, couldn't believe it. Didn't think it would happen all comp, because everyone does so awesomely. Time to back it up this week and lose at least 1 kg!