day 2: earnestness creeps in

the workout today was shoulders and arms, as tony horton called them, the vanity areas. i was upset to discover that he had insight into my recent donning of a tank top or two. also day one of the workouts with no cigarettes, which i think helped with the heartrate/exhaustion problems from yesterday. i found out that i'm a lot better at shuffling weights up and down with my arms than i am jumping up and down for an hour straight. i still worked my muscles to exhaustion and was definitely losing form toward the end/second halves of some of the circuits but my look at all that dogmatic "fitness" vocabulary worm its way into my blog post. "muscle exhaustion" "loss of form" "circuits"... this is proof of my thesis that as one becomes more physically fit, one becomes inevitably more earnest, not only about ones fitness, to which one has obviously dedicated a certain amount of energy, and the results of which dedication are obviously gratifying, but about everything. i think it is overwhelmingly people who view themselves as fitness-oriented out there listening to this american life and protesting things they don't understand.

so i burned through that workout and then attempted Ab Ripper X. fairly challenging, in that i could not complete any of the exercises for the prescribed duration/number. presumably this will improve as i go forward.

i have completely abandoned the diet as both too rigid and complex for me to manage right now. perhaps later i will be able to integrate it, but for now i will continue to subsist on fruit, clif bars, protein shakes, redlines and one real meal at night. goals achieved: learned the screaming man's name, did not lose to any video people with prosthetic limbs, generally made a pretty good attempt at completing the two workouts. count it!