Lactic Legs

As some of you know, this semester started with me weighing 142 lbs. However, since my birthday, students and friends of mine have been treating me to a lot of stuff (beer, food, beer)and so that fairly OK weight has turned into a whopping 155 lbs. Before I get dismayed with my general health, I took things into my hands: Common-sense-less-carbohydrates-and-more-veggies diet and exercise.

My good friend, Manuel, has been bugging me to start working out again. I took the opportunity, and so for the past 2-3 weeks we have been into a sort of a gym-cardio-gym-cardio workout schedule. I go to his house thrice a week, run that semi-dreadful treadmill programs, stretch and work my ass off to shed some weight and tone my, uhm, physique. It's good, really, even though so many are the times that I can't reach my back to scrub it while bathing because of the pain and strainon my shoulders and arms.

Yesterday, a Saturday, is also included in our schedule. So I sweated my way out of that treadmill program # 3for 30 mins, stretched, and worked my way through bench presses, lat machine exercises, hammer and dumbell curls. After a gruelling 2-hour workout, I decided to warm down by doing some stretching again, shadow-boxing routines and working my legs.

I decided to do some boxing stuff by doing some hook-ducking footwork while carrying that 1.5kg medicine ball. The drill goes like this:

Your partner delivers slow hook punches, one at a time, while you carry that medicine ball with both hands in front of your chest. You duck a little and bend your knees a good deal to evade the hook while simultaneously working on a V-shaped footwork alternately to where your partner's punch came from. He steps back, then you two repeat the same procedure several times. 1 set consists of 40 repititions; 20 reps forward and 20 reps backward. I did 3 sets. Do the math.

I decided to do another set, a one-for-the-road thing. Then that's where the funny thing began.

When I bent my legs the first rep of that set, I froze. I can't move my legs, they were stiff and in GREAT PAIN. I think of lactic acids rushing to my leg muscles, busy overloaded trains jamming on a Dusseldorf station, people cursing the operators to their graves as if they just skinned babies.

Push 2 milligrams ativan. Stat!

My legs turned to wood, painful hardwood.

Wincing every second, I inched my way to a chair in a half-squat position. After taking some deep breaths and praying, I labored to stand up straight. Beads on my foreheads. Then I calmed myself, sat down, and massaged my thighs.

hehehehe... hehe...

Now I can't get up easily from bed, er.. bedding, since I sleep on the floor; can't quickly stand up from a chair, much less on a toilet seat; I canNOT freaking bend my knees without laughing painfully. Everytime my vastus lateralis flexes, fire shoots up to my gluteus maximus. Hopefully, on Tuesday, I can climb up the stairs to conduct my classes to room 301 of 2 different building in the campus.

This is insane, and I like this. I could use this stuff from time to time.