I remember the Bangles song with the same name really well from my childhood for some reason, but already I’ve managed to digress, that must be some kind of record.
As the title of this entry suggests, Mondays for me are pretty manic at the moment. Quite aside from the shock to the system that coming back to work gives me, I’ve got so much going on. Once work’s out of the way (and Mondays for the foreseeable future at work are going to be manic) the clock starts ticking. I’ve got to get home, changed, do whatever chores need doing and then start chopping up some cheese. Mondays are dog agility days, and as Murphy has absolutely zero interest in toys once he’s out of the house, I take small pieces of cheese as rewards for him when he gets things right. Next is getting the hound himself ready which is never easy, as he has ten minutes of going absolutely mental when I get home. Taking his lead out just compounds his euphoric noisiness and jumping about, but once he’s tethered and I’ve made sure I’ve got everything together, it’s off to the field where the agility lessons take place, about three miles away.
Dog Agility used to be quite a relaxing thing, the dogs would only be capable of three or four obstacles in a row, but now it’s quite different. Murph and his classmates are quite capable of more than sixteen obstacles in a course and dogs can be pretty fast (even short-legged ginger ones), so just keeping up with him around the course is a workout in itself now. I managed to embarrass myself not once, but twice during last night’s lesson. Part of the course involved sending him over a jump and then getting him to do a sharp ‘pull through’ around the wing of the jump. I stopped sharply to turn, but by now dew had started to settle on the grass, and out came both of my feet. I’m sure the frequent throwing in training means I’m much calmer when I’m on my way down now, but it was very relaxed as I landed on my ass completly horizontal with the pup licking my face as if to say ‘Come on, get up, we haven’t finished the course yet!’. Naturally I managed to do exactly the same thing about ten minutes later at another jump, much to the amusement of everyone there and the total bemusement of Murph who probably thinks it’s a new move we haven’t learned yet…
Dog agility finishes at 7:30 and I’ve got half an hour before my BJJ class starts. That means saying my goodbyes, getting the dog together and racing home to drop him off before heading into town for my lesson. Last night I was ill-prepared and had forgotten to get cash out to pay for my class, but somehow still managed to get there in time to get ready before it started. It was nice to get back in training after a week out with my mangled arm and shoulder, and although I had to be careful and take it easy with the rolling, we worked some more ‘de la riva’ sweeps which was great. My progress seems to have hit a bit of a sticking point at the moment, but I’m sure something new will click soon and I’ll feel like I’m getting better at it again.
By the time we wrap up there, have a bit of a chat and get home it’s normally about 10, which means I’ve got time for a quick bite to eat (I still haven’t had time for an evening meal by this point) before going to bed again. I find it hard to sleep on a full stomach, so I’ve taken to taking protein before and after my class to keep me going. This current bag of Mint-Choc whey protein is really nice which is lucky. I had considered getting some unflavoured whey and adding nesquik milkshake powder as had been suggested to me before, but when I thought about it it’s really not such a great idea. Part of my reason for taking protein is not only to help keep strong, but to cut some weight too, and adding nesquik which it turns out is 93%(!) sugar, and well, that’s not going to help. Ok, a scoop of that is only about 15g, but even if I could stick to one scoop per drink I’d be looking at 45g of the stuff a day, 7 days a week. That’s about 300g of sugar, or if you prefer, ~1250 Calories a week extra. For a bloke my size that’s half a days eating extra! If I was a girl it’d be almost a full day’s worth of food. Blimey. The flavoured stuff from myprotein.co.uk uses sucralose as a sweetener – safe as houses and zero extra Calories – bargain!