Of Love and Hate

Last night was what I boldly call my cross-training night; the "strength and conditioning" class at my gym. I am one of 2 males that attends this class regularly out of about 30 people. Feel free to come up with your own assumptions about the difficulty of the class, or my own physical abilities, but I will go out on a limb and say you're probably wrong. These chicks are nuts. They are tough. They come every week, several times a week, and use heavier weights than I do. They don't sweat, they never stop. They scare the crap out of me. I stand in the back and try to stay out of trouble. Not one of the several male coworkers that we've managed to convince to check out this class has ever returned.

In other words, I love it. The leader is a fierce, crazy Jamaican whose loose track suits hide the fact that he's really just a skeleton wrapped in cords of muscle. He feels no shame in telling you that this is the last set, and then adding two more. And then starting you on another exercise that uses the exact same trembling mass of proto-muscle. I hate him, but I try to do all the reps just to spite him. And somehow it works.

Tomorrow I'll swim. I've been trying to breath every 5 strokes, which I think will help my efficiency. (It may be clear here that I haven't learned any terminology yet.) This also forces me to breath on both sides, something I suck at, and it's occured to me that I'll probably want to breath away from somebody swimming right next to me. I'm going to keep doing this, shooting for 250m sets in 4 minutes, until it gets easy. Then I'll have to regroup and see if there's some way to step it up. 250m/4 minutes gets me the mile in about 24 minutes, which I think is good, but doesn't count other people, waves, the wetsuit, cold water, etc. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm still confused on my options of heart rate monitors and wet suits. I think it can wait a little while, though. If anybody's actually reading this, and loves their wet suit/HRM, throw a little comment in here, it's free.

How it all began

I have several friends who run in various events, and I've always been jealous. It gives them a goal, an actual reason to work out, and an instant membership card to the Society of Crazy Athletes. You know who I'm talking about - the ones that go home early so that they can run at 8am in February, while you proceed to close the bar down and loose your credit card...

Now, I have various issues with my genetic heritage, but my knees particularly suck (hi mom!). I can run 4 miles on the street or on a treadmill, and spend the rest of the week hobbling around with a knee brace and a bottle of Aleve. Maybe all runners go through this at first, but I highly doubt it (they can't all be that crazy). So it was bizarre when my friend and colleague announced that she was doing a team triathlon - who knew such a thing existed? With training I could passably do the bike or swim segment, and it turned out that the original swimmer was more than happy not to swim a mile through balmy Lake Michigan, so here I am.

This is my very very first competitive event like this, at least since probably high school. I'm not sure how to train for it, I need to somehow find and buy a wetsuit, I think I might want a watch with a heart rate monitor, and someday I'll have to put it all together and actually swim in an ice-flecked e-coli harboring body of open water, strapped into an EKG monitor and 5mm of pliable rubber suit. I'm sure I won't feel like a dork.