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Wednesday March 5, 2014

AM Session
A lovely walk on the beach.
[url]http://www.mapmyrun.com/view_workout?w=498659603[/url]

PM Session
A not so lovely encounter in the hotel gym...

This hotel has the nicest gym of any hotel I have ever been in. So it's not the fault of the hotel. They even had a HIIT workout displayed on the white board near the towels and water. The HIIT workout included burpees, KB swings, and GTOs. So it's not the fault of the person running the gym. Maybe it's my fault. I was, after all, wearing a CrossFit t-shirt, and in the land of isolation curls, tricep extensions, crunches and mirrors, CrossFit is the devil. So maybe I brought it on myself, I'll let you decide.

I started off by holding a goblet squat with a 25# dumbbell for about two minutes. The father/son team doing isolation curls nearby were able to absorb this in the mirror and ridicule it with a dismissive knowing laught without too much difficulty. After all, I still had my sweats on and the offensive CrossFit t-shirt that barely constrains my Oly Lifting guns were still on. I ignored their little joke at my expense.

I moved on to deadlifts. If you know me, you know I have a pretty decent deadlift. The hotel gym had two Oly bars and at least 2,000 pounds of plates. I started with a set of ten, then did sets of 5, then sets of 3 as I progressed in weight. The father and son team, who were still doing isolation curls (20 sets of 10 on each arm?) were having some fun at my expense, apparently my admittedly too large tummy and expansive posterior chain didn't fit their model of "fitness", even as I moved heavier and heavier weights. While I can't disagree with the "bhudda-belly" observation, I do disagree with the "fat-***" comment. I earned that protruding posterior chain. It ain't fat, it's huge. There's a difference. As their soto voce comments became more barbed, that little switch inside me inched towards "danger."

On the final deadlift, I dropped the bar. Probably on purpose. Junior jumped. It did make a really impressive racket. So impressive that the attendant from the aerobics room came in to see what had gone wrong. I was putting away the weights and smiled at her and asked if she could bring me another towel. Everything was cool. Except for the father son team who were now onto tricep extensions. I noticed that there was no sweat under their isolation table. They noticed that there was a big puddle of sweat where I had been doing deadlifts. It's Florida, it's humid, I sweat, a lot. Tensions increased. I'd been deadlifting, there was testosterone coursing threw my veins. There was the smell of sweat and iron in the air.

After deadlifts I had 10x10 squat cleans at 135# on my schedule. Why should squat cleans anger anyone? I wasn't upset by their isolation exercises, why should anyone be upset by my big movements? I was out of the way, over in the corner, far from the mirrors and the isolation equipment. Why should a weight lifter practicing a weight lifting move upset someone? Maybe it was the CrossFit shirt, which was now displayed, the sweats having been thrown carelessly in the corner. The guns were out, and the curl and tricep extension crowd didn't like what they saw. I'm not saying I have beautiful biceps, but I am saying that if you do as much Oly lifting as I do, you get some bulges. I have some bulges. Bigger bulges than the father son team doing iso exercises. Much bigger. I think this ****ed them off. A lot.

"It's really hard to concentrate with you grunting so much," the dad said. The son giggled. Like a little girl. Really, just like my 5 year old niece.

"Sorry," I said, not feeling sorry at all. I was earning the puddle of sweat and the old man lifting noises. The squat cleans felt great. The grunts may have gotten a little louder, and a little more frequent. So maybe this is all my fault after all.

"I said, it's really hard to concentrate with all that noise," the dad said just a little louder.
"Yeah man, and all that sweat is gross," the son added.
I realized that I could carry the 135# over to him, clean it, jerk it, and drop it on his head and crush him like a Palmetto bug. I let the thought pass.

"It's a gym, it's humid. People sweat," I answered.
I turned away, back to my corner, my last chance to de-escalate.

On the 100th squat clean I dropped the bar. Maybe on purpose, maybe b/c I'd done 100 squat cleans and there wasn't any chalk and it was humid. Maybe because the bicep and tricep and crunch crowd nearby were eerily quiet. I lift weights, I'm used to noise, I'm not used to quiet in the gym anymore. Father and son were still on tricep extensions. There was still no sweat in their area.

"Are you almost done?" the son asked.
"Yes," I answered.
I reclined against the wall, sweat pouring off me, extremely proud of my 10x10 squat cleans.

"Good," the father answered. He gave me the look. You know the look. Everyone knows the look. The "you look away or there's going to be a fight," look. I could have looked away. I should have looked away. I should have walked out the door onto the beach and just enjoyed the glow of a great session practicing for the Pan Am Games. Tim and Jeff know that's not what happened...

I didn't look away. I looked back. With "that" look. The "I know and you know that you shouldn't have looked at me that way" look that the guy who knows he's going to win the fight gives the teapot bully who is used to getting away with the look. Maybe because he's rich. Maybe because he's the boss. Maybe because he's surrounded by people who don't ever look back.

He could've backed down, he should've backed down, he could have shown his son how to behave when a 250 pound man with bulging muscles whose just deadlifted more than the father and son weigh together and whose just squat cleaned 10x10 at 135# looks back at you. He didn't. I didn't. Someone had to blink.

"Maybe if you did some cardio you wouldn't be so fat," the son weighed in with.
"Cardio? I went for a walk on the beach this morning," I said.
"A walk? That's not cardio. Running is cardio, rowing is cardio." He pointed at the rowers lined up against the far wall.

"Rowing?" I asked. Did I mention the amazingly well-appointed hotel gym had four Concept 2 rowers?
"Yeah rowing," the kid said.
"Maybe I'll do some rowing. Good idea," I said.

It only sounded like I was backing down. I was baiting him. Setting him up for humiliation. You know I was baiting him, I know I was baiting him, we all know I was setting him up. Because there was no way that this kid, or his dad, neither of whom had any posterior chain, and neither of whom had any muscle of any description, despite their isolation curls and tricep extensions, was ever going to beat me at rowing. It wasn't going to happen. Not in this world, not in the next. And perhaps beating them at rowing would be a better release then the alternative. I still could've walked away. I didn't need to humiliate them. It's a character flaw, I know it, and one of these days it'll be the end of me. But that day wasn't today.

"Don't give yourself a heart attack," the kid said.
The father laughed.
"Wanna race?" I asked.
"Race?" the kid said.
"On the rower? We can make a bet or something."
"Race? A bet?" the kid said.
The father looked at the kid, the kid looked at the father.
"You're on," they said together.

We haggled, we postured, we negotiated, and finally reached an agreement on the distance (2k) and the bet. The details of the bet don't matter, not because I won, but because they wouldn't pay up. Who would lick up another person's sweat? I should have bet money. Maybe they would have paid. Anyway...

2k later, I'd won. Easily. So easily that the father was convinced the rowers were defective. I'd been rowing at about 18 spm, giving it a nice powerful pull each time, keeping it right around 2:00/500m. The son had been flailing at about 30 (until he quit after about 400m) and the father had been flogging the log at about 28, but not moving the rower b/c he was only pulling the handle about a foot each time, even though travelling the entire length of the rower. He was so convinced that the rowers were defective that he wanted a do-over. I wasn't sure he was going to be able to get up from his rower. But he insisted.

"Fine," I said. "You choose the rowers."
He took mine, and put me on his.
I didn't wipe the sweat off my rower, and it was pretty wet. My shorts and shirt had soaked through on the squat cleans. He had to be pretty motivated for the do-over, there's no way he wanted to lick my sweat off the floor.

The son had skulked off into the corner. Apparently the isolation curls and tricep extensions had made him too tired to be able to row.
"This is just between you two now," he managed. It was a clever way to escape having to pay up.

Only a few of the dozen or so people in the gym had taken any notice of the little showdown.

We strapped in, we did another 2k, I won, again, by a much bigger margin. Kudos to the dad though, he finished, in just over 15 minutes.

"Didn't want to give you the satisfaction of seeing me quit," he said.
I could have held out my hand.
I could have said "nice work, way to hang in there."
I could have let him off easy.
But I didn't.
That's the character flaw that's going to get me killed some day.

I didn't ask for him to pay up, I just told him to wipe down the rowers.
The attendant beat him to it. She had been hovering with Clorox wipes.

Finally I just left, like I should have about a half an hour earlier.
When will I learn?
When will I ever learn?