Paint It Black (Goals)

Lead Trainer is eyeing me skeptically, "Answer truthfully, if I create this workout routine for you, you'll actually do it? Right?!"

The question was the result of me injecting all sorts of negativity into our goal setting meeting sparked by her innocuous question of, "What do you like?"

"I like the cardio machines though I hate the fan bike."

The Rolling Stones Paint It Black begins playing in my head.

I see an elliptical and I want to paint it black...

Realizing I'd gone too far with the negativity I lean forward, "Look, you don't know me but I'm told I'm an 'acquired taste.' I just hate slogging through twenty minutes on a machine."

Iron Man strolls by the open door and says, "Just did fifty minutes on the elliptical!"

I see a treadmill and I want to paint it black...

Lead Trainer eyes me frankly, "You don't have to be on the machines, I can devise a routine that will get your caloric burn up the same as thirty on a machine in much less time."

I'm stunned and allow a trickle of hope to enter this exercise gulag I've checked myself into. It feels like a chore and I (if I'm to succeed) need it to feel like something I want to do. I had it once and lost it and I'm at a loss on getting it back.

I've always been intimidated by Lead Trainer and as I'm getting to know her I'm starting to get a feel for the kind of person I'm dealing with. Your initial impression is she's incredibly bubbly, always "up beat" and there's an element of truth in that assessment but this is also a woman who's tried running her own business and is managing the corporate exercise "show" coming up with group exercise times, things to keep whiners like me in line, dealing with "people" (I shudder).

In short, she's incredibly driven and you can get glimpses of the steel underneath that bubbly if you look or (I'm guessing) irritate her.

I make a mental note, "Lead Trainer doesn't 'speak' negativity. It's not part of her vocabulary,"

Next Monday I'll be introduced to my first routine. I'm curious about it and what she'll come up with, I'm also told if I want to stay sane I'll need to get another one six weeks from then, or so.

Maybe I'll try a spin class this Friday ... while I'm waiting for the whip to come down.

GrubHub Delivers Taco Bell!!!

This information, "GrubHub delivers TacoBell ... for free!" flows directly into my id, effortlessly past my finely honed defenses. Corporate marketing departments don't mess around, the bastards.

I ponder my options as I pluck another Ho-Ho from the bowl. I probably will have to download the GrubHub app now, TacoBell having driven me to my knees.

Steak Rattlesnake Fries?! With nacho cheese sauce AND creamy jalapeño sauce? And Rattlesnake???!

I've never had rattlesnake and ... oh ... it's TacoBell's version of "steak," so snake is probably a nearer truth than one might care to admit, and still my body craves it.

I've been cramming Ho-Ho's and scotch into my body in an attempt to appease it, for today I stumbled across some device that I might even hate more than an elliptical:

The front wheel is actually a fan and the harder you go the more it resists you. Toss on some wings and real wheels and I'm on a nineteenth century flying machine.

After adjusting it and circling it to waste even more time I mount it, crank in twenty mins and pedal, move my arms and the wind from the fan rushes into my face, forcing my mouth open, giving me instant cotton mouth.

artist's rendering 

Sweating, flopping, flailing, dealing with the tradeoff of using more arm to ease the legs or more legs to ease the arms, every time I standup the bike smacks me in the knee for it, wheezing like a locomotive I'm beginning to think that

I don't look dignified at all!!!

How long have I been enduring this nightmare?! Three minutes, super. My mind drifts off to the Australian Outback and these murder mystery books set in that hell hole - I bet even The Lost Man wasn't as thirsty as I am with this endless wind. 

I take solace knowing how sad Lead Trainer and others will be when they find my dead, desiccated ass glued to this "device" - "Oh no!" they'll say, "we should never have left Bill alone with ... anything!"

Too late, but if I'm desiccated then I'm thinner! Still, your loss bitches.

I really should start bringing in a water bottle, but as I glance around I fall into further despair, there is no place for a water batter bottle on Satan's Cycle. Just shut up and keep pumping that wind into your face.

I stumble in the outback and fall ... I can't get up ... I'll die if I don't get up ...

Oh! My twenty minutes are up! I hop off the device and immediately, my whole body starts screaming,

WHAT THE HOLY $$#&!!* WAS THAT?!!! DO YOU WANT TO DIE?

DO YOU?!

ENJOY YOUR LATE NIGHT CRAMPS YOU $$#&!!*

On and on and no amount of scotch or Ho-Ho's seem to be settling it down.

I'd make a great, drunken diabetic, you know until the money ran out but then again we all would make great "hot messes" until the money ran out. Just ask Lindsay Lohan.

That should be on my tombstone,

The money ran out...

Having lost 75% of my frontal lobes through oxygen deprivation I stroll into Lead Trainers office...

Tell me more about this 'love and attention...' 

That happens Wednesday, idiot that I am.

What's it mean???!!!

I'm staring at the 12.5 pound dumbbell in something akin to wonder. What's its purpose? What was the reasoning behind adding the extra half pound? 12.5 pounds is 5.68 kilograms so I doubt that is the answer.

I canvass the others in the gym and they're mystified too and these guys would know but then they're dealing with more troubling problems like, "Why is the bar on one of the weight machines nineteen pounds? Huh?!"

It's a good question and might make for fun math if you were trying to lift something like seventy five pounds.

I mean twenty pounds would be a kinder number (19 pounds is 8.64 Kilos BTW).

So why? ... I'm starting to feel like I'm in an X-Files episode or OK maybe Scooby Do, "The Mystery of the Strange Weights."

Perhaps the same manufacturer of the bar also makes the dumbbells and some corporate beancounter said, "Well if we take one pound off the bar we could add one half pound to each dumbbell and really screw with Bill!"

I don't know but I'm oddly attracted to 12.5 lbs and plan to incorporate it in all my workouts. I am a huge fan of, "The Land of Misfit Toys."

I'm still trying to acclimate (the time change didn't help) to getting into the gym before switching over to Iron Man time. I read some article (probably written by my wife) that if you want to get benefit from dragging your resentful, excuse making butt into the gym you're gonna have to do it three times out of the week minimum.

Well I'm already doing two, so why not one more? (Buy the Ticket)

In other news :-)

Omens and Other Portents ...

Clearly there's something amiss ...

There are more cars in the parking lot, what's it mean?! I trudge (yes Wheezy trudges when not waddling) into the locker room half-heartedly wondering if a blog entry will occur to me or not.

This blog will be critical to my continuing to destroy myself in the gym. I enjoy writing even if I'm crappy at it.

Enough negativity.

I toss my bag in some locker grateful that:

1. I'm in the men's locker room so no one is getting dangerously excited and
2. that it's the same locker I used last time

Study's show that exercising keeps you smart and I don't doubt it but I would say that the exact opposite is true for thirty or so minutes after a workout when your mind, flooded with endorphins, is in the "WTH just happened?" stage. 

I waddle towards the gym when I see him but I just can't quite process the image... could it be?

Ironman!!!

He's wrapped up his workout and is wiping the gym down. Nothing remains untouched after an Ironman workout. We hug, in a totally gay way, and we both open with the same question, "What the heck are you doing here?!"

It turns out the highfalutin gym he was attending, because it was close to his home and all, has transformed into some hellish regimented workout zone where you spend ten minutes on a machine, a whistle goes off and you move to the next machine. I can't recall what fancy-pants name he gave that (cuz I'm getting smarter) and I've dashed off an email to Lead Trainer for the name.

Lead Trainer replies back with, "Is it Orange Theory?" I don't know so I dig a bit deeper and of course she's right, that's why she's the Lead Trainer and why I asked her in the first place.

So Orange Theory has driven Ironman back to this gym on MWF at 5AM

Give me another week I have to psych myself up for that hour of the morning.

I did 20 on the bike and blah blah blah lifting and whatnot and have starting entertaining the idea of allowing the trainers to give me what they euphemistically call, "love and attention" - don't be fooled, this is trainer speak for destroying your will to live.

Could be fun - buy the ticket ...

I walk to the car wondering why it's so cold when I realize I left my coat in the locker room - getting smarter by the minute.

Buy the Ticket ...

Today went a hair better because I decided to push it a little. I'm not sure what but maybe it's the initial shift in my mindset.

I'm here, in the gym making endless adjustments to the spinner I'm about to mount (pros call this "stalling") and pondering my next move in Red Dead (I must get another perfect cougar pelt but cougars scare me and I'm no Travis Kauffman and I scream louder than my horse when one's attacking. it's irritating hearing my wife giggle when it happens.)

Where was I?

Oh yeah, mindset.

Hunter S. Thompson wrote that and when my mind's right I try and live by that credo. I'm in the gym and I can either desultory pedal the spinner (that's called Tuesday's workout) or I can start inching towards getting benefit out of this workout thing.

I bought the ticket, oh yeah and that happened because Lead Trainer (this name will change (honestly this lady deserves a great nickname) as will others when nicknames begin to occur to me) who's young and foolish "invoked" me, demon like, with an email.

Subject: Let Us Help You Get Back In Action!

With a list of bullet items, here's my reply:

I’ve reviewed your list and here’s my reaction to it:

• A goal setting consultation
• Sure! The initial goal should be getting me back in the gym (preferably sober) at all and then increase the frequency
• A fitness assessment
• WAY too depressing!!!
• An equipment orientation 
• I think some of the ellipticals might have changed, so OK
• A customized physical activity program (“PEP”)
• Maybe we can start with, “Getting out of the car without going anaerobic” – this might fall into the goal setting thing above ...
• A recommendation for a group exercise class
• There are things group members should not be forced to see – Bill working out is one of them
• The Make a Move program
• Not sure what this program is so as long as I don’t wind up in HR then we can discuss it.

So I'm pissed off because my AirPod's batteries are dead so I have to listen to the swill being pumped in via satellite and if I'm honest it's "OK" anyway I'm sweating and puffing and that feels better than being bitter and just cranking the shaft.

I'm observing others in the gym at this ungodly hour, some guy on an elliptical (ew, but I'll have to get on that hellish thing soon enough) and some lifters. One guy is all about form and when I enter that phase he's the one to get pointers from. The other guy, he's fit but I've been on the bike for twenty minutes and all he's done is talk to Lead Trainer.

Has there been a breakthrough in exercise? Can you simply talk and get healthy? What have I missed during my hiatus?

Maybe I should write a book ... Drink Yourself Sober I'd make a mint with that little "enabler"

As I'm headed into the locker room Lead Trainer asks this dude going in with me if the locker room smells funny, apparently a member reported this to her. She was wise not to ask me but sadly I was in earshot and after I shower and make myself oh-so-pretty I report back to her.

"It smells about 20% alpha and 80% beta at the moment. (I'm guessing she has a much more accurate percentage) mostly talcum powder and vanilla"

She stares at me blankly (I'm an acquired taste) before getting it.

It's a locker room and a male one at that for crying out loud.

Whatev 

Due to family stuff the next time I'll be in this gym is a week from today.

So the guitar thing...

Yeah, the guitar thing didn't go well AT ALL! Turns out you have to practice - a lot particularly if you have zero talent and rhythm, which is why I'm back in the gym.

Fatter
Older
Even slower (how's that possible?)

but I went in for the second time and have already put on four pounds!!!

I couldn't be more pleased.

My other passion appears to be this video game called Red Dead Redemption 2 - it consumes my free time which is probably why my wife was angling for maybe having Red Dead AND something that exercises more than your thumbs?

Why not?

But I will talk about Red Dead, a lot.

You've been warned.

An so it begins ....

See? That was nothing. But that's how it always begins. Very small. - Egg Shen

I haven't exactly renounced exercise but I'm not embracing it at the moment either. Instead I've been on something of a vision quest that began with the untimely death of Prince.

While reviewing his life I came across this gem:

And my passion for being the best guitarist EVER was renewed. The magic begins around the 3:25 mark if you're impatient or something.

So the next exercise in futility will be my journey in mastering the guitar when I'm far too old for this stuff.

Next, what guitar to get because it's clearly the equipment and not my lack of practice.