Cross Trainer

hello comrades. i hope you all had a good weekend. i certainly did. i bought a long overdue new helmet and it is AWESOME! once i buy a card reader for my camera (maybe this week?) i will be putting up pics. ALSO i will be putting up a number of things, including a couple of videos, that have been waiting for said card reader. i wont go into too much detail, but i am pretty excited. it will be some mega-blogging, for sure. anyway, thats not what i was planning to write about, because those are posts from the future! (wow. i kind of time traveled with my words. i feel so powerful).
SO, i have been doing super excellent at the pool lately, but almost to the point where i think ive hit a bit of a plateau. the solution? get STRONGER. particularly the upper body. i have neither the need nor the desire to do strength training in my legs due to hyper excessive cycling and the simple nature of wheelchair pushing. so, i thought to myself, how am i going to go about this? i tried a women and weights class for a while when i first joined the y and it was ok, but i wasnt fond of the time slot of the class, and i just dont really like doing weights. its more like a necessary evil, as far as im concerned. it doesnt help that i take after my mum and i bulk up rather than tone down, and i really dont want to be getting bigger, just stronger. so i went to the y on thursday knowing full well i had missed my chance to go to lane swim (this is my other problem. its hard for me to go to the gym and do strength and conditioning when i know i have the option of swimming) to do some free weights, upper body only. and of course, i got bored with that in about ten minutes. but i wasnt about to hit the shower that soon after arriving. so i started wandering around, and what did i see?????? THE ROWING MACHINE!!!!
generally, i hate working out with exercise equipment, but i remember enjoying the rowing machine when i was just a child, so i thought hmmmmmmmm that sounds like upper body strength conditioning and possibly fun. so i hopped on, left it on the highest setting and programmed it for 5km. after 27min17.13 sec of pretending i was rowing down a river i was done. i doubt thats a very impressive time but its good to remember such things for future reference.
man oh man was i sore the next day. my pecs and biceps were on fire! it was awesome! SOOOOOOOO i am happy to report that i have found the cross training regimen for me. alternating swimming with rowing. i just have to pick up some hockey tape for my hands because the rower gave me nasty blisters. just to tide me over till the end of the month, when my mum is going to hook me up with some gloves. :)