Well I really did it to my feet by not wearing socks in my new trainers – I took the skin right off the backs of both my ankles.  This necessitated nearly a week of no gym and almost no shoe wearing.  Events consipired against the swimming too, so from Monday evening last week, to Monday this week, I have done nothing.  By Sunday I was feeling distinctly blobby and determined to go to the gym on Monday.

So on Monday evening I gave it a go. I decided to row to warm up, then do the weights and core exercises, then do the cardio – the idea being that as the walking is where I did the damage on the heels, and I wasn’t sure if the cycling contributed too, I would leave them both till last.

I did the squats, lunges, clean & jerks and row/tricep exercises with no problem. The pull-down lats caused the intense pain in my right shoulder again on the first set, even though I’d gone down to 7.5kg. Then I realised that I have a tendency to sit too far back, so I shuffled forward and this was better, even though my left arm was doing almost all the control on the return so my right arm wasn’t actually contributing very much. The second set was OK, I could still feel a little discomfort, a bit like a bruise, but it was easing. I did two sets of this batch of exercises (only 1 of lunges as instructed)

The core exercises weren’t bad – pelvic tilts, ab crunches and hamstring curls. The latter are very very difficult, the others are fine. I did one set of these plus a set of single-leg bridges to test out my knees, a tiny click once or twice but great on the whole.

I was tired after all that, of course, so I put myself on level 9 on the cycle and managed it. “Bike program 1″ is tougher than “Fitness 2″ that I was on before, but I was able to stay above 75rpm throughout and was in the 80s for most of it. Another go like that and I’ll move to level 10.

Onto the treadmill, and within ten steps I stopped. Straight onto the heels. So I called it a day at that point. I was quite pleased that I managed that much though.

Today, two days later, I went to Majestic Centre to have another go. I decided to follow the same programme (cardio last) for the same reasons. Rowing was fine. Then the weights. All of these were fine, I did all three sets (1 set of lunges). The pulldown lats were fine, I made sure I sat forward and I had no pain at all. I still have to be very careful to control the return motion but hopefully my strength will build up in this area.

Core exercises – I did the required two sets of these, they were perfectly fine.

Then the cardio. The cycles were all in use, so I thought I’d try the treadmill. Again it went straight to the heels, which are mending well but I didn’t want to open them up again. So I did the second set of rowing and then went for a 15 minute swim.

After that I decided I’d earned a spabath. Love that spabath.

After the workout on Monday I was tired but glad I’d got through as much as I did. Today I feel much much better – my back coming back into line, my legs springy and supportive. I’m looking forward next time