Bitingly cold morning. Walked down to Manly in the dark. Roaring  southerly wind that went straight through me as I walked into it. Air temp 6ºc on the clubhouse clock at the surf club. Water still dead flat. How lucky. Water was about 18ºc – three times the air temp. I was a bit lazy. Didn’t race Denise and Jan on the way back. Gym today was a killer . Belinda started me doing unsupported lunges and squats – three sets of each on both legs with 8 reps holding a 5kg dumbell, in both hands and positioned under my chin. I found this incredibly difficult. She wanted me to keep my back as straight as possible – hence the dumbell – with weight on both front and back legs.  It made the muscles in both legs ache. We then moved to doing squats and dead-lifts with a 14kg weight called a Kettlebell. We did three sets of this with 8 reps.

Interspersed with this she had me balancing on my bad leg on the blue  hemispherical gym ball. I found out these are called  BOSU balls. They are an inflated rubber hemisphere attached to a flat, rigid base. I had been calling it a “blue half-ball”, but its proper name is a BOSU ball. Belinda said we will be using it a lot in coming months. I can balance on it fine with my left leg and I’m getting better balancing on my right leg. My left hamstirng is still pretty sore so we did no leg presses or extensions on the machines today. I’m really stuffed, but felt much better after one of the protein shakes and a couple of protein balls from the Virgin cafe.