hot oil anaerobic wok
Every inch of me is fried, shredded, cooked, mashed & crushed, as I write this… I wanna cry with exhaustion and frustration. My hands and arms and abs feels as if they have been gnawed on by large rough beasts, to say nothing of my legs! My Russian jump dryland workout at courtside today was haaaaard!! Hard equally on my body and the weak brain of mine that rides atop it.
Today, an hour and 45 minutes through my 3 hour pylometric session my soul began to crack from the endless jumps, sprints, pushups, and one legged hops in the skate position…
I began thinking, “I can’t do this!!! this is too hard!!! I am worthless!!! I can’t live up to all the people who believe in me!!! My wife will move across the country for my dreams, and I am not mentally strong enough to even finish this workout!!!” A lot of athletes are driven by internal mechanisms that are sometimes not pretty, healthy, logical, or sustainable. I am no different.
This is one of the great dangers of working out alone, especially when pushing beyond your physical limits and frying your muscle fibers like lo mein noodles in a hot oil anaerobic wok.
Once the levels of self-disgust started becoming dangerously toxic, I took a 20 minute break, ate a banana, drank some Gatorade, and sat alone in the mirror lined room at courtside that I usually do my dryland in.
I took stock of myself, drenched in sweat. Lots of little bits of me were hurting, but really, what was hurting the most was my confidence, the legs still had something to give, but the expression in the mirror was pretty beaten. I almost walked out of the gym right there, thinking maybe I really needed a “mental day”.
But I can’t do that. I believe in a life philosophy of “train how you want to race”. So I approach each moment in these peak effort workouts as if the intensity matters like my season was on the line right here, right now. Mind games can be a valuable tool, especially for sprinter types like me, who need to go 100% frequently.
But it’s dangerous fire to play with, sometimes it burns you the wrong way. So I convinced myself, however illogically, that training hard & finishing this workout strongly, proving to myself that I am not a quitter, that will earn me my racing goals (or at least the satisfaction of knowing I tried as hard as I could) this upcoming race year. Its no joke that in the gym, right now, I might as well have been stepping to the start line at Olympic trials, I got that butterflies in the stomach feeling that I get before important races.
I took myself & my butterflies downstairs to the free weight room, & away from mirrors that were not showing me what I needed to see. There are many good people at courtside (they are one of my sponsors too! thanks tom!), I know most of the trainers, great folks, and today there also happened to be lots of “eye candy” pretty people working out. People with puma sleek bodies, glowing with tans & bleached hair, tasteful tattoos, & clothing that dramatically calls attention to their, uhhh, total perfections (let me just leave it at that). I kinda like gyms with this element, I always have, not sure why… But the “pretty scenery” straightened my slump, set my jaw, and screwed my sodden brain back into its proper socket.
Going from the overdose of the internal, to the external of the free weight room, was the right move, and among the powerlifters tossing around 100lb dumbbells, and trophy wives in makeup bopping along on their elliptical trainers, I found focus again, and the butterflies became cruise missiles.
People probably looked at me funny as I finished the last hour of my 3 hour workout. If you have never seen a speedskater doing dryland, it can resemble a weird martial art, where you just swing one arm and do lots of strange balancing sideways kicks. But I did not care, I got stronger as I worked harder and harder.
After my final effort, I gathered up my stuff from the locker room, and waddling upon now truly shredded lo-mein legs, went outside into the early evening & light rain. Walking to my car, my skin felt hot, and I would not have been surprised if I heard the rain hiss away in a puff of steam as it hit me.
I felt no sense of victory, no sense of proving myself. But what was there in my heart was more the grim satisfaction of a bricklayer, in the concentration of building something heavy, piece by careful piece. It was good enough for today.
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Filed under: sweat
Is it silly, to constantly celebrate the oncoming warmth? this was a very, cold, long winter… and seeing sun, the flowers coming up, to be in shorts again, to go for my easy bike workout this morning and be comfortable, not a frozen andrewsicle by the end (hard russian jump day tomorrow, so today is easier than pie, today’s workout is about tomorrow, really). Flowers are up all over the place, and I will celebrate as long as I am still astounded to see them. The glacier of winter can crawl into your heart, days like today help melt it.
Peter #1, Peter Doucet is a true free spirit, a barrel chested quebecois redhead with travel & hip music & speedskating rampaging in his veins, veins powered by a heart that must be as big as a truck tire. Peter Doucet does not come off as serious when you first meet him, at first impression he is funny, charismatic, a live wire of freedom & passion. Many talk about living free, but are too timid in their own lives to actually be free, Peter is a free soul, no question about it. 
Peter #2 is 
In undergraduate school, as I was being published right and left, accepted almost every time I submitted writing to a publication, true joy for me was the rainy New England collegiate cycling races, and the muddy cyclo-cross racing in the fall. The pic here is of the “usual suspects” of the Hampshire College cycling team after the UMass cyclo-cross race. From L to R is Chris, Able, Earl, Donnie, Me (with smashed bike) and Evan (wearing the rubber gloves he always used to race in during foul weather, note his gap toothed smile from a bike crash earlier that year).
What a sloppy, nasty day outside. It is maybe 40, windy, and pouring. You can see the 
I actually used to really love racing in this crap. I was VERY good at it (more than half the races I won on the bike were in foul weather), mental toughness mixed with youth, insanity & off road bike handling skills were a good skillset to have when there was standing water in the corners, oil lifting off the pavement, manhole covers slick as ice, and your mouth filling with salty tasting grit from the rear wheel of rider in front of you. 
Where do you lead me, my dear dog/blog, beside the rushing waters of glinting bandwidth? Where do the words beckon? How does the world flow, in and outside of my own self?
I don’t know, but its beautiful today, the sun is glinting off of fall creek, my dog Lilly is so happy to be outside her tail is almost spinning circles with every joyful step. Spring is coming, poking through the thawing ground. My own life just feels right today, both in the logical and illogical realms. 
The scarecrow was always too scratchy for Dorothy to really hug, he smelled like hay from close range, and after he got his brain, like most people he found true thinking a mixed blessing. He spent many hours in his original field, conversing with the flowers, consulting with the rain, right back where he started from, less happy than before (so he would sit, and think some more).
Someday, internet access from airplanes will be as commonplace as cel phones are now… then one will be able to blog successfully & email from 33,000 feet…. there is an airline testing service in flights from Japan to the US, but its still in its infancy… Someday bandwith will flow like airline pretzels, as the urge to always be in touch becomes consuming (that will strengthen the backlash to it as well) as the urge to never leave a moment unfilled with some gadget completely triumphs…
the image posted on this page is an early morning shot I took last July of the mountains that loom over the town. Salt Lake is a place of simply stunning physical beauty. It has the fastest indoor speed skating track in the world, and the typical amazing mountain west climate (amazing to an east coast fella like myself).
