Its funny that in my last entry I was mentioned Ping Pong and then today that’s where we ended up having a 3-hour pig out! Jenny and I planned a kind of girls day out with first a visit to the gym, a hair cut and then lunch/dinner, depending on how our day went, at Ping Pong.
We started the day off with a session at the gym though looking back I don’t remember working particularly hard. I spent some time on the rowing machine (which we used as a warm up but after 5 minutes on it I was nearly done in!), treadmill (I just can’t quite get used to how the whole thing shakes every time I land on it so I don’t find it very easy to run on) and the bike. Jenny worked particularly hard and I think managed over half an hour on the treadmill which bodes well for 10km run in July. My attempt, on the other hand, was pretty pathetic and I managed just about 11 minutes to jog 1.5km which is really really slow before I stumbled off the treadmill! I think I need to learn to push through the pain barrier because I must admit that once I hit that wall where breathing is even slightly uncomfortable I manage to convince myself that its too painful, and not good for me, to continue! I then proceeded to spend about half an hour on the bikes before Jenny took me over to try and teach me how to use that weird all over body elliptical machine which is supposed to be very good for you cardio-wise, good for an upper and lower body work out and all without having impact on your joints. I just couldn’t get the hang of it and though its supposed to be natural action it felt quite alien on it and I didn’t last long. This was followed by a bit of work on our butts (crucial) on the step machine and then a quick visit to do a leg press. We topped off our gym visit with some time in the sauna and steam room. Nice. Awfully relaxing but later I was to find seriously dehydrating and gave me one of those headaches bad enough to make me nauseous. Of course it probably wasn’t helped by the ginormous amount of food I consumed at Ping Pong!
Inspired by our gym session and feeling pretty good we headed off to walk the 1.5km down to Covent Garden to go to one of my favourite hairdressers in London. For £13 you can get a cut and wash. They are very quick, and give a lovely hair wash, though admittedly the hairdressers could probably afford to take a bit more time with their styling. But for £13 I guess you can’t really ask for too much. The guy who sits behind the desk, I think the owner, is very friendly and I’m not sure if he recognises me or not but he often has something nice to say to me.
Following the hair cut we decided to continue with our physical exertion for the day and walk to Ping Pong which actually happened to be located up near the gym we’d just visited (that is, another 1.5km walk.)
On Sundays Ping Pong have a Lazy Sum Days deal which for just over £17 you can have as much as you can eat from their regular dishes (no specials or desserts sadly.) Its fair to say that between Jenny and I we more than got our value for money. When we arrived at Ping Pong there didn’t appear to be any tables free for just two persons (there were a few four-person tables) so the waiter went to seat us at a communal table which was empty at the time we arrived. We wanted our own table and asked if we could sit at on of the four-person tables but the waiter insisted, as it was restaurant policy, that we couldn’t have one of the tables despite the fact it was about 3.00 in the afternoon and there were only two or three other groups in the restaurant at the time! Silly boy. At any rate this actually worked in our favour as we could then actually fit all our dishes on to the table (it would probably normally seat about eight people!) We ended up sampling nearly every available dish and had 20 (!!!) between us. To put this in perspective when I go to dim sum with my brother we normally have a main dish (some rice or noodles) and five or six dim sum dishes. Granted we had this food amongst a lot of talking and it was probably about three hours later when we stumbled out the door.
We had a few deep fried dishes but on the whole I think that dim sum food is generally quite healthy (mostly being steamed.) The biggest risk is the salt content of the food which comes from the dish itself plus the soy sauce or chilli oil that you dip your item into. However, I do think that perhaps we went a bit overboard in what we ate. Its only 7pm and with my giant headache (from the earlier dehydration) and pains in my stomach (from serious overeating) I’ve decided its time for bed!