[groan]

I did not exercise hard today. I don't exercise hard. I'm not one of those folks whom my wife and I used to refer to as 'grunt buddies' -- egging each other on, getting each other to lift more, man! Just ten more reps! I'm a moderate exerciser. (That I can refer to myself with a straight face as an exerciser at all still bemuses me.) I go to the gym every day (or as near as; I've gone all but one day in the last two months), I do thirty minutes on the elliptical, and then either a) twenty minutes on the treadmill, b)fifteen minutes on the free weights/Cybex equipment), or c) none of the above. And then, a fine prickling of sweat on the back of my neck, I go home, where I frequently collapse into a nap for an hour. That's it.

Okay, today was a bit unusual, in that I went in the morning to do the elliptical, and then in the afternoon met with my trainer, and did exercises with her, too. But they weren't strenuous. One was, simply, sitting down on a bench and getting up quickly, multiple times. One was standing in front of a mirror and doing lunges. (I almost wrote doing lunch, which would have been interesting.) We did 'hip abductors' and 'hip adductors', which basically meant sitting either with a pivoting set of pads between my legs or on the outside of my legs, pushing out or squeezing together to lift a weight. One set of essentially lying on the floor pushing up on a weight with my legs. And finally stepping up and down on a one step arrangement, multiple times. At no time did I get very tired (okay, the up/downs on the bench got wearing, but the effect didn't continue for long). I felt fine when I left.

And then I came ...home....and my thighs said Um, don't expect much of us for awhile, 'kay? Kay. And I sleep for an hour, wake up exhausted, take a steaming hot shower, come out wet, hot, and semi-awake. And only now, an hour later, as I sit here sipping some licorice-spice tea, do I feel like maybe I'm waking up. Almost in time to go to sleep.

So maybe I did exercise hard? Just a bit? Yeah, maybe.