My flight from Dubai was less impressive. The dude I sat next to firstly took my seat, secondly snored like a bear(he’s snoring actually caught the attention of the guy on the otherside of the aisle) and thirdly kept his elbows firmly sticking out into my side. That sucked. It was a 8 hour flight. I did watch the ‘re-write’ though which allowed me to sustain a certain level of sanity. Its a film about a famous screen writer who’s worn out and decided to teach as this is the only thing that’ll pay right now. Anyway a quite light-hearted(i wote light-headed originally) film and its got some pretty student mother whom obviously he falls for and well, we all know that story, right?
I also watched an interesting film called, The Gambler with Mark Wahlberg. I had 27 film that I added to my favourites but they never materialised. In flight I did have my protein intake which was supplemented by a couple of Sachets I bought at the local Holland and Barrett in Wimbledon on the day of my departure. I’ve got about 7 left and I took one before and after my workout this morning. Yes this morning after a wonderful sleep where I caught up on most of the 17 hours I missed. Bed was super comfy too.
Weird thing about my workout this morning was the weights - the weights are numbered totally differently than in my local Gym. For instance, I usually start of my inclined dumbbell presses with 16Kgs and then work incrementally onwards using 18,20 and 22 Kgs. Not here. They use weird increments like this: 15, 17.5, 20, 22,5Kgs. Put me off my stride a little but soon got into the swing of things. Also my 'skull crashers’ aka tricep extensions suffered because of it. They didn’t have 17.5Kgs barbells. They only had a 30Kg one - I used that and it killed me on my 3rd set. So much so I had to reduce down to 25Kgs just to finish the set. That said, I did better on the calfs - they had a real standing calf raise machine - don’t have one of these at my gym and I always compromised and used the squat machine to get my calfs raised!
Back to the flight, I was concerned about not eating enough and correctly while flying. I also then worried that I wasn’t eating too much. In Dubai, I got myself a Oats pot which was great from a place called ‘Giraffe’ which might even be the same chain as the ‘giraffe’ in London - there is one in Spittlefields. This should have given me some good carbs. I was missing some veg and nutrients so I got myself a Chicken salad(Almonds, chicken, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots and cucumber). That was just before catching my flight to Johannesburg at 3:55am. I can still remember the gate number, B22. In flight meals were good, despite the fact that someone got my meal instead of me and I ended up with a stanard ‘chicken or beef’ meal (I ordered a low cholesterol meal) but whatever, I’m not that fussy really. I avoided the cheese but had rice, chicken, crackers and orange juice, I do think that these meals are particularly crafted to be balanced in terms of protein, carbs and fats. Non-the-less, I think I still needed to supplement with the additional intake i suggested due to me being an active chap and wot not.
When I did get to the hotel,I had dinner which was roughly the same - veg, side salad and some steak pieces which I hope weren’t too fatty - it didn’t look it though but you can never tell. I also had some oats which the staff here at the Radissons Blu sandton were happy to accommodate - it was 9pm.
After the gym, breakfast was oats again, whey protein from one of my sachets(I;m happy these got through security actually) and scrambled eggs, chicken sausages(x2), one tomato(fried) and a few mushrooms(very nice). I put myself together a instance cup of coffee at the coffee machine and all was well.
It was pleasing to see that the staff put a complimentary newspaper( which i noticed on my way back to my room from the gym)at my door this morning which I duly took with me to breakfast.
Its now 10am, and I’ve got about 2 hours left until check out and i think i’ll spend it online…free wifi, of course!