Team CrossFit Springfield & Co. Photo by Molly White

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
“Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

This week, several athletes from our local gym, CrossFit Springfield, will head west to Los Angeles to compete in what is loosely referred to as “The Games”. The Games are, basically, the World Series of CrossFit (take a look here); this is where gyms (or Boxes) will be sending their best athletes to convene, compete and collectively throw up as they put their bodies through incredibly awful workouts designed, most likely, by disgruntled Navy SEAL’s strung out on boxed Chardonnay wine or the blood of their enemies.

To outsiders, this is gonna look like Jonestown, version 2011; people in the world of CrossFit speak their own dialect, spend ungodly amounts of money on supplements, “Paleo” foods (apparently we need to eat like cavemen, despite the lack of wooly mammoth meat), and workout clothing, which we immediately discard to the floor the moment the clock starts ticking down to the actual workout. Shirtless makes you faster AND stronger (why pay $64 for a shirt if you can’t throw it to the floor as soon as the clock starts ticking?). Unfortunately, like most cults and mega-churches, some people just won’t shut up about it, ever, thereby alienating co-workers, family and friends with stories that seemed seasoned with Amway-flavored enthusiastic sales tactics.

And that’s a shame, because CrossFit IS such a good thing.

It IS a community. It IS a family of encouragement and achievement. Most of the competitors representing Springfield are our coaches. To watch them put themselves through the grueling paces of what it takes to compete at this level is inspiration itself. There is a factor of discipline that eludes most of us when you play at that level. There is no room for a casual attitude. No room for excuses. I admire intensely the mental intensity these people have. They move through exercise movements with a fervor and pace that makes you think they’re relying on instinct and natural prowess, but to say that sells them short. Our friends are competing in this arena because they’ve worked countless hours on countless days, trudging through snowbanks in the dark of morning, sweating like the damned on the hot asphalt of a July in the Midwest. They deserve this shot because they’ve earned it.

There’s a part of me that would love to be out there, screaming like a maniac at the ThunderChicken, in exact inverse as to how he’s coached me over the past year. His style is to chew gum slowly, shake his head back and forth and mutter things like “put your hands on the bar, Gooley”. The other part would be driven nuts by the fact that I’ve never been much of a spectator of sports; I’d rather be in there trying to compete. Unfortunately, you need to be really, really athletic to compete, so there’s no threat of that happening any time soon. The last person CrossFit Springfield needs to be represented by is someone who’s only claim to competitiveness at the gym is in the arena of sweat production.

So I’ll wait back here, patiently. Twitter and Facebook and texts will feed and flood my mind as the Games take place. Life in Missouri will continue at the same pace, clogged by gravy and humidity. Several friends from our Box are headed out there to support our team in person, and, to experience that little bit of California heaven known as Compton after hours. I’ve recommended that they keep both red AND blue handkerchiefs on their persons, so that both The Bloods and The Crips will be confused and perhaps focus their hail of drive-by gunfire elsewhere.

So, coaches and friends…I want to wish you luck, but that’s not what you need. You already have what you need – a fierce will, strong bodies, stronger minds and the soul of a winner. I want to thank you for all you’ve done for us, and for all you’re doing for us; there is no better leadership than example. Where you place is up to you; no matter the numbers on the board, you’ve shown us all back here in Springfield what it takes to be winners. For a guy who will probably never take his shirt off in the gym, this means a lot. You’ve had our backs as we’ve struggled through each miserable workout; we’ve got yours.

Now, go kick some ass, already.

Rep Number 36 Goes Up / photo courtesy Christi Clark Photography

Three days ago, I participated in the CrossFit Springfield’s 2nd annual Guns & Hoses Team Competition a fund raising endeavor aimed at benefiting the Wistrom Family Foundation, a truly worthwhile cause aimed at helping children with cancer. ALMOST as important, though, was the chance for military service members, cops and firemen to compete against one another, a chaotic stew of testosterone and nerves and borderline projectile vomiting. At age 36 and years of bad choices behind me, the concept of competing in athletic endeavors (outside of ice hockey) holds little appeal; I’m too old, the NHL ain’t calling, I gotta work tomorrow, my kids have beaten the spirit out of me, the list of excuses goes on and on as to why I don’t take up the chance to compete in much of anything anymore, outside of an ongoing chess match with my liver.

So when I was approached by some younger firemen from Station 2 about putting together a team for this competition, my first instinct was to duck and cover and pretend I didn’t hear them. But there’s only so many hiding places in a firehouse. Eventually, I had to give them an answer, and after several rounds of me saying “really? What, you need a John Candy-type on your team?“, I relented and made them promise to give me a decent burial when I inevitably died on the competition floor. As the days ticked down to competition time, my nerves begin to fray and unravel at a record pace. I’m old, man, and there’s really no need to humiliate myself any further in a public forum, especially as I do it on a regular basis just fine.

And then it was time. This was the time where Rocky theme music was supposed to cue up in my mind, shadow boxing in the mirror as I took one final shower before the event, setting my mind right, right? No. Clearly, I’ve watched far too many movies, and the reality of the whole time leading up to the competition was absent of motivational music, save for the screaming torrents of Dropkick Murphy tunes cranking in the bathroom. It’s a quiet desperation of sorts, really. I’m not in the best shape in the gym, knowing that I’m a relatively weak link on the team, and about to risk some real injury, both to my body and what is left of my self esteem. That sets up a morose cloud of doubt lingering over your personal skies, but, then, what are ya gonna do? Backing out at this point is the equivalent of backing out of a house fire: that shit will follow you for the rest of time.

As the events were described and teams assigned heats, I began crawling out of my head with nervous energy. These guys were serious, Marine Corps guys strutting about, cops from different towns all giving the eye to one another, firemen nervously joking about needing an ambulance on standby (okay, that was me), and a general tension that always precedes competitions of strength and stamina. I just needed the thing to start, already. Get me in the game, and this sensation of dizzy nausea may pass. Too soon, the race had begun. I’d describe the various events, but if you’re not familiar with the CrossFit lingo it’s just gonna come across like the cult mumbo-jumbo that it is. The exercises consisted of lifting of heavy weights, swinging of other heavy things, jumping up and down and over, lunging with random heavy objects over your head and tossing heavy sandbags over tall bars. You know, stuff you might never, ever encounter in your life. Ever.

To sum it all up let me just say this: in all my life, in whatever endeavor I’ve ever undertaken, I’ve never been pushed so hard physically to the point of a breakdown. It was set up as a team effort, so to quit or give up was to force three other people into forfeiting all of their efforts. I can insert all types of trite, catchy athletic “dig deep”-style phrases here, and you know what? THEY WOULD ALL BE TRUE. To force yourself to continue when all logic and reason demands you give up defies the physical imperative of the body, and it becomes a war of wills. To confront that wall and slog through the marsh of oxygen deprivation robbing your body of rational thought is a scary, and emotionally draining experience. This competition demanded slamming into this wall repeatedly to the point of sheer exhaustion and near collapse.

It sucked. Plain and simple.

Each time I reached down to grab that bar for another lift, when my back and legs and arms and lungs screamed for sweet release, my teammates, the people who’d come to cheer people on and the sheer force of will were driving forces compelling me to continue. I wish I could say that I was mentally strong enough to conjure up images in my mind of continuing in honor of some hero, or a sick kid or that bully in third grade who pretty much ruined my grade school experience, but I’d be lying. At some point there was no more room for thought, no more room for cliched imagery to motivate. Nothing was left but that most basic of drivers: instinct. The voices in the background were muffled, eyesight was clouded by sweat and chalk, and it was a lonely place to be left. Instinct to finish what I’d started was the only push left. Ridiculous faces and ridiculous amounts of sweat and stupid grunts all in the name of instinct.

Countless hours (or, like, two) later we staggered across the finish line, somewhere in the bottom of the rankings of the ten teams that entered. That didn’t matter. Three friends and I finished. We went to the bottom of our wells of will and extracted every last bit. I’m so proud of them, so proud of us for laying our guts and souls out there on the floor. I’m thankful to the coaches and staff and volunteers from CrossFit Springfield who offered their free time to guide us through the pain. I’m grateful for ThunderChicken who had the dubious honor of being my assigned coach, dutifully counting out the reps, vocally shoving me further and further out of my comfort zone, just like he has since the first day I set foot in the box. These people showed us, showed me, what was possible if you push yourself over the edge.

It’s a hell of a place to find yourself, at the bottom of that tank.

It’s quite another to crawl back out of it.

From The Dirty Churros Archives....

Tomorrow, I’ll be undergoing some sort of exploratory procedure. The details are somewhat murky, but the long and the short of it is that some people who practice this sort of thing will be trying to discover why I can’t hardly eat a solitary slice of apple without having a near death choking experience. Since it gets really, really old to constantly be clutching your throat at restaurants while your eyes shoot off in different directions, I’m on board with this whole thing. But since I’ll be under the influence of drugs the names of which I cannot pronounce, I immediately assume there’s a chance I’m gonna die, violently maybe. That being the case, I thought I’d update my will, the last copy of which was printed on a cocktail napkin one night in the throes of a rum bender and an argument over the origins of the M.A.S.H. theme song.

So here goes nothing, literally.

I, Uli, being of unsound, unstable mind and broken body do leave my entire estate to the following people in the event of my untimely demise in a bizarre industrial mishap or some equally chaotic end.

1. To my children, The Heathens, I leave the bulk of my substantial debt. This seems to be trend of our national leaders, and I’m nothing, if not a patriot. I would encourage them to utilize this situation to learn how to speak multiple languages and enjoy the concept of living abroad, preferably in the company of women of ill-repute.
2. To The Wife, I leave my 5 hockey sticks and my entire metric wrench collection. I never did trust her to use the standard size with the proper amount of respect. Also, I leave to her my collection of dirty and clean laundry, unwashed dishes and vast assortment of paper clips I’ve been hoarding over the last year.
3. To The Dirtbag, I leave my beloved dual-sport motorcycle. I should warn you, it’s not paid off yet, so rip the plate off and head south of the border when you come pick it up. As well, you’ll have access to my motorcycle gang of two, The Dirty Churros, and my friendship with El Jefe, but odds are you two won’t get along. Think of this as a team-building exercise, and my last gift to you.
4. To my shop cats, I bequeath my air compressor and all the associated pneumatic tools. I think it would be awesome if they figured out how to use them to terrorize the feline world. Best of luck, gatos.
5. To ThunderChicken, I leave my vast stash of frozen bacon. Lord knows, you look like you could use some, man. That staying fit stuff might kill you yet….in fact it may be why you’re now reading MY last will.
6. To my brothers, Bones, Buns, Chewie, Nan, and Barbara, I leave you nothing, because you’ve spent your lives making mine miserable, and this is what you deserve. Fine, the five of you can split my sweet collection of old red shop rags. No fighting.
7. To RoJo, I leave all of the books and magazines I’ve been quietly stealing from you since I was 18. Don’t hold a grudge.
8. To The Outlaw Trucker, I leave all the scrap metal in my shop. Weld me something beautiful, preferably a statue of me stabbing a savage, attacking wild beast in the eyes. Use your imagination.
9. To The City of Springfield Fire Department, I leave that tube of toothpaste that’s in my locker, and that itchy, nasty wool blanket I was issued in rookie school and made to swear I’d return in 25 years. Most lower mammals wouldn’t use that thing to nest in, by the way.
10. To my friend The Author, I leave my glorious, luminous and entirely non-grey head of hair and magnificent pelt of manly chest hair. You’re welcome.
11. Finally, to my beloved canine MoJay the psycho-killer boxer, I bequeath all of our domestic garbage receptacles since you’ve spent the last year knocking them over and rooting through them at every chance. Go on, help yourself to old banana peels and coffee grounds. I hope you gag on an old guitar string, you obnoxious bastard. I love you so much.

There you have it. I expect this will to be faithfully executed, but let’s be honest here: most of you are gonna come over, loot all of my worldly possessions and then burn my house to the ground, pissing on the flames as you pour out your malt liquor over the ashes. I’m good with that, too.

ThunderChicken & The BabyClucker

To witness unconditional love is to witness grace itself. As fathers, when we hold our children for the first time, there’s a moment of immersion wherein our complete being becomes compromised and torn down and rebuilt. Our souls, our hearts and minds, everything we’ve ever known gets forever altered and intricately intertwined to 7lbs. 11ozs. of chaos. And we’re never the same for it.

To love like that, in that moment, so selflessly and overwhelmingly is a thing of relentless beauty. Few moments in life can rival this experience. It is a fleeting taste of unbound joy and desperate terror as we realize our every action from here on out will, in some odd way, impact the life of something so innocent and so pure. The birth of both of my boys rewired my heart forever.

Of course, being as how they are now 7 and 5, that innocence is melting like a glacier; we immerse ourselves not in swaddling and gentle stolen moments of holding the babies, but rather, in Transformers and fart references and the joy of cleaning up 7 million Lego pieces at a time. And that’s ok, too.

Thunderchicken became a father to a little boy yesterday. His daughter calls him her “Five Dollar Daddy”, a story that she’s concocted about how she “bought”  Thunderclucker for a half sawbuck way back when. Theirs is a wonderful relationship, but I don’t have female offspring, and girls and women scare me, so I don’t pretend to understand the dynamics of fathers and their daughters, not even a little. But a son, a son is a being I can comprehend.

I was at the firehouse when Thunder and his wife welcomed their boy into the world, and it wasn’t until this afternoon that I got to see the little dude. We’d exchanged texts, like the teenage girls we are, yesterday, when he announced the arrival. Unconditional love. Two words, a bond shared between man and son, and that life altering moment. When I walked into the room, his baby wasn’t in his arms, but the look on Thundercluckers face spoke the volumes he was feeling. All of them, mashed up into one overwhelming onslaught of unabashed joy. His lovely wife was recovering from the whole affair, tired and gracious as ever. That sort of energy is infectious, and when love fills the room, if that doesn’t bring a smile to your face and peace to your heart, then you’re one cold bastard. Their little man is safe and healthy and sleepy and for that briefest of moments, you believe in the triumph of the human spirit, despite all that is wrong and crazy and destructive in this world. This boy is hope, theirs and the rest of ours.

As people gleefully passed this baby around like the cheese plate at a cocktail party, I was overwhelmed with emotion towards this person I’d known for all of seven minutes. More than that, I saw the look on his old man’s face. This is a boy who will be loved, as a child deserves, unconditionally and forever. He’ll grow up and break his parents’ hearts, his siblings toys, several rules which will cause the Thunderchicken to lose what hair he’s hoarding on his skull. I’m so excited for him, for his family. The bond between father and son is unlike anything I’ve ever felt and commandeers the better part of your heart. Watching my friend establishing these bonds is a privilege, indeed.

Congratulations, Brian.

One of his latest posts on Facebook was congratulating a co-fighter of his from the Springfield Fight Club who had recently been cast on the Ultimate Fighter (like number 47 or something) television show. When asked, ThunderClucker had nothing but high praise for his friend who, in his words, possesses “a game day mentality. (He) gets thru practice, then kicks ass on game day”. My game day mentality consists nervously puking before hockey games of any consequence and fighting the urge to urinate every second I’m on the ice.

This got me to thinking: if I could be in any sort of confrontational sport (outside of hockey) and be even mildly successful, I think it would have to be one of my own invention – The Ultimate Slapper. The entire sport/television show theme would involve some trash talk (in the same style as mentioned at the beginning of this post) and then the players just getting up and slapping the ever loving bejeezus out of their opponent. Old school style, with gloves off and in one hand, or just with the back of the hand like a pimp from Pomona, there are infinite variations on the theme you could employ.

I told Thunderchicken of this bold idea, and he immediately threatened me. After he condescendingly stated he might watch such a show, I told him no, you’d be on the show, my first opponent. He said I’d be his first victim. Trash talk right out of the box….kid’s gonna be a star. I informed him that despite the threats, there’s no way he could withstand my blistering backhands and cat-like clawing. I would slap with passion. With verve. With hysterical screaming and wild gestures.

It must’ve worked, because his status immediately went from “chat” to “offline”. Round 1: Slaphappy Uli TKO over Muscled Chicken.

Round 2 promises to be a doozy, since I’m supposed to attend his class at 5am tomorrow. I can only hope he abides by the rules. My rules.

Coach G & ThunderChicken play firemen

Today’s workout at CrossFit Springfield consisted of a position called The Plank. It’s a basic push-up position, except your elbows are on the ground, and the goal is to maintain a rigid pose or something. Not too hard in theory, it is stupid-crazy to maintain for more than about 10 seconds. Eventually your knees sag, your ass begins to raise up in protest and you find yourself within tongues distance from the floor, stupidly debating ideas like what the floor might actually taste like. From what I understand, this exercise is supposed to work your abs. My fat gut begs to differ.

I thought I was really hitting it well. It felt like I was ramrod straight, what with all the burning and stuff I was feeling and the sore elbows. (Man…..out of context that last statement is really, really, well, you know….but it’s not, so stop thinking it.) Meanwhile, as I was hanging out in the plank position for a virtual lifetime, I hear screeched from one corner of the gym “ULI! DROP THAT BUTT! NOW! NOW!” That tone and timbre could only be produced by one person I know: ThunderChicken.

Yeah, we’re back to meeting up at his 5am classes. He’s positively thrilled that I am gracing his training once again, since I bring the kind of workout ethic that he likes to highlight as “What Not To Do”. The other morning, I actually finished the warmup run first. FIRST. In no way does that mean anything, since I usually finish the actual workouts last, but I’m in dire need to shed something like 37 pounds in the next three weeks (got that 10k and a hockey tournament). His response to my run? “What are YOU doing coming in first?” That’s the sort of motivational speech I like in a trainer. If I hadn’t been experiencing a mild cardiac episode, I mighta punched him, thereby breaking my knuckles across his jaw. That’s the kind of chemistry you just can’t fake.

So he keeps howling that I need to drop my ass. He’s letting all kinds of shit slide with other people, the other 31 sufferers all coming up with ways to endure the pain. I’m cheating like mad, and he’s busting my chops with each infraction. The penalty for dropping a knee is a round of burpees, yet another sadistic exercise. I keep earning rounds and rounds of them, oblivious to his harassment.

Finally, he can’t take it. His screaming is going unheard. His pleas, unanswered. He grabs some weight plates and puts them on my backside area in an attempt to get me saggin’. I was having none of it. I fought the workout; I lost. And then it hit me as I fell to the floor yet again: the man is obsessed. Is it my copious capability to sweat? My ability to have my stomach drag the floor in a full push-up position? Was it the sweet odor of failure I was emitting with each collapse? My God, the man’s become a stalker. I should by all rights be creeped out, but honestly I’m a little flattered.

Deny it all he wants, he’s got man-crush issues. I can’t say I blame him. The only way I’m gonna break him of that is to punch him right in the face. And as soon as my knuckles are tough enough? I just may try it. But I better keep training in the running department, because I’m gonna need to be fast.

Who Took My Weights?

I drag my ass into “the box” (which is the cute vernacular used to identify the CrossFit Springfield gym) this morning after work. I’m late, and that’s nothing new in the least. The workout lined out for the day seems particularly brutal and completely out of attainable range (if you want to see it, look here. I won’t bore you with trying to describe the various gyrations). Lately, the ol’ relationship with the gym has been tenuous at best, despite several proclamations that it starts TODAY. TODAY is when I get back in the groove. TODAY is when I look the temptation that is bacon and beer in the eye and shoot it the bird. TODAY I stop being such a lazy fatass. Well, okay, maybe tomorrow.

See the dilemma? No?

It’s about self-loathing. It’s about the inflexible schedule known as “being a parent with kids out of school who  demand things like your ‘attention’”. But mostly, it’s about being lazy.

So what was a daily ritual of going to “the box” has become more like a recreational hobby. And, when the time came to saunter on over to The Wife’s 20 yr. high school reunion, the tragicomic results of treating it like a hobby came into laser-beam focus. I was thankful that I only knew one other person there, since it saved me the inevitable “MY GOD, you haven’t been missing many meals, have you?” conversation that take fun and awkward to a whole new level. To those people, their poor classmate simply married another fan of the Chinese buffet; to me, it was just another excuse to drink around strangers.

But I’m getting distracted here.

Today, like most days in the gym, I planned on doing the workout “non-prescribed”. What that means is, the masochists who run the joint make up a certain weight amount or form to use that they label “prescribed”. For example, the workout may call for 60 pull-ups (rx). I am good for maybe two pull-ups and then I fake it the rest of the way, using bands to assist or just crying in a puddle of shame and sweat. The prescribed version of a workout is generally reserved for the varsity level athletes, and one of the nice things about Crossfit is that they “scale” down the workouts so that someone in just about any condition can jump in and break a nasty sweat. Having never really lifted weights and having no desire to blow out a knee and toss my cookies simultaneously, I pace myself in terms of weight and form. And the truth of the matter is, I often cheat myself.

So it comes down to do you focus on quality or quantity? The workouts are generally timed, so you can post a great time if you just mash your hips into the floor and scream out and call that a push-up. Or you can take the slow train and do it right. And right there, glaring on a white board is your name, your time and if you rx’d it. No one really cares what your time is, they care what their time is, especially as compared to the group. I like to make up obnoxious times with weights that are physically impossible, just to see if trainers like ThunderChicken notice. He always does.

For reasons unknown, I stopped caring about the time component today. Maybe it was the extra pot of coffee. Maybe my brain was short circuiting in the humidity, but somewhere along the line, I decided to do the workout with prescribed weights. And it damn well killed me.

As the rest of the class was finishing up, making pretty little sweat angels on the floor, high-5-ing and heaving in labored wheezes, I wasn’t even close to done. There was no sense of grit or sand or raw determination pushing me. No “Eye Of The Tiger” playing in the background. I just wanted to do it for real. My back was shrieking as though it’d been tasered, my knees wobbled like I was trying not to crap my shorts and I was leaking sweat in reportable quantities, but I decided to truck on through. Finally, one guy was left on the floor with me, and I was using him as motivation, unbeknownst to him. Each lift he did, I was just copying him. I actually grunted like a choking troll, but was too wiped out to be embarrassed.

Finally, sweet release came as the weights smacked the floor one last time. I did it. DEAD LAST IN CLASS.

29 minutes and 50 seconds later, and with eyeballs drowning in sweat it was over. I was more than 10 minutes behind the leader, and I couldn’t have cared less. For one, glorious, heave-free moment, doubled over in front of a fan, I felt the satisfaction of doing it right

Tomorrow? There’s no telling about then. I might slip back into a more casual relationship with this whole fitness business or maybe I push myself like a lunatic again. But that moment back there, all alone in a pile of accomplished sweat stains, that was pretty awesome. And that calls for a cocktail.

Johnny says.....

1. Those who pretend their pets are children

These people are seriously off their rocker, although they are the first to insist that they are just “normal parents”. Oh yeah? Does your dachshund have teething issues that keep you up at all hours? Do you have to buy $36,000 worth of diapers for your cat? (and if you do, then I stand by my sanity statement). No. Feed the little bastards, show them some love and teach them not to crap in the house, and basically you’re set up as a pet “parent”. And dressing them up at Halloween only makes you seem a little creepy, although sometimes it comes off as very funny. You’re confusing the term “parent” with “owner”.

2. Those who have children and act as though they are the first people to have ever had them.

Segueing from my first topic, I just love it to no end when a new parent thinks anyone else in the whole world (outside of immediate family) cares when their kid takes their first dump, or sleeps through the night or “graduates” from pre-school. These are not parental breakthroughs, people. And if your kid is truly and honestly the smartest individual ever to walk the face of the earth, no other parent really wants to hear how their own kid is shamefully second-rate. So do your little Mensa dance in your own house, and let every other parent in the world think THEIR kid is the smartest one in the tri-state area.

3. People with fish on their cars.

Worst drivers ever, and usually with the road manners of a rabid wolverine. I don’t think Jesus would condone you cutting someone off and flying the bird as a symbol of victory. You wanna wear the badge of your faith on your vehicle? Then act as if Jesus really is your co-pilot, not whoever that is your chatting on your cell phone with at this very moment. The Old Testament is very clear about this.

4. The Kardashians. Or any reality-television family, really.

You people do NOTHING, and yet command an enviable salary for said skill. Somehow, it was decided to publicize every mundane moment of the lives of these people and declare that they are stars. Then, when they make a statement like “I’m just fat” or “I slept with the entire special teams division of the Oakland Raiders”, it is somehow worth print, discussion and television air time. And I hate myself even more for mentioning you here. Damn you, dark headed beautiful idiots.

5. Talk radio hosts

I’ve listened to talk radio on and off since I was eighteen, mostly because there’s really nothing worth listening to in the middle of the day, and I used to find the dialogue intriguing, if not prone to whipping me up into a political lather. Now, as I get older and a little more mellow, I realize that these chowderheads do nothing but fire people up into a frenzy and offer nothing of real value to the conversation. The ability to politicize every single event and cater to your worst fears of an impending threat of communism (Vietnam, anyone?) now just come across as whiny, pathetic attempts to profit from your ire. The BP oil fiasco is no more the fault of Obama than Katrina was the fault of Bush, and yet, there they are, assigning blame and working us into a tizzy.

6. Part time workout ninjas

You work out? That’s great. You really badass and want the world to know it? Um, ok, that’s a little much for me to admire (outside of sites dedicated to the workout. Like Crossfit. I’m talking about in social settings, so don’t jump my ass over this, Thunderchicken). I think it’s commendable that folks are out there who are genuinely improving their physical and mental well-being; I just don’t need to know the details of how much you lifted after your dentist appointment and how much you “owned” this or that. Ok, I get it. Flex your muscles, be proud, whatever, but I’ve noticed that the most fit among us rarely have to advertise it. And I count myself among the most unfit.

7. People who live in heaven and insist on shoving it down your throats

Guess what? San Diego is apparently heaven on earth. I know this because most people I know who live there and are on Facebook insist on posting photos of sunsets there and declaring how they’ve somehow staked a claim on paradise. Look, I’m not a fool: I realize how nice it is to live in Hawaii/The Hamptons/NYC, and I realize you’ve figured out how to afford it, and that’s just ducky. Just know that for someone living in Tucumcari, New Mexico, the 726th photo from your condo showing the waves breaking at sunset may be just the trigger for him/her to begin a homicidal rampage. Don’t be a d-bag….chuckle amongst yourselves at cocktail parties about how “the other half” lives and leave the rest of us alone.

8. Those that make kids toy packaging

Just how much theft of toys is happening in stores that their designers require parents to have a mechanical engineering degree to liberate the crappy plastic gift from its crappy plastic packaging? I have to use a Leatherman tool, tin snips and my oxy-acetylene torch rig during the holidays just to hasten the process. There is enough sealed plastic and twist ties to make me believe that there are some kinky mofo’s in charge of packaging. Creepy bastards.

9. The Lyrical Jackass

He knows why.

10. The doctor who’s gonna be gloved up tomorrow

As part of the Fire Department HazMat physical I’m taking in the morning, I get the ol’ exploratory sweep. There’s nothing pleasant about that for anyone involved, but there will be screaming. I’m getting all clammy and my knees are sweating just thinking about it.

Do You Know What Nemesis Means?

“But this time…
…I do want him to go down in the fourth.
And I DO mean it, this time.” -’BrickTop’ in the movie “Snatch”

TODAY it began in earnest. We left for our trip out west somewhere around April 15th, returned somewhere around the 25th and I’ve been to precisely two (2) workout sessions from then til this morning. That’s almost a month. One month is more than enough time to re-animate all the latent laziness and idling lard-assedness in my system. One month of crappy food. One month of getting sweetened up shit-laden coffee as opposed to the standard black fare. One month of the jump rope in the rolled up position and the gut in the horizontal extension mode. It’s as though I’ve gone back beyond square one and am now looking upwards out of this hole wondering just how the hell did THAT happen?

Here’s the thing about gyms: I hate ‘em. Even the highly-touted CrossFit Springfield intimidates and annoys me at times, and this is because I feel so far behind the 8-ball that the path of surrender seems much more inviting. Give in. Order some Sesame Chicken and a gallon of beer and talk about how you might’ve turned out, if only. Slip the belt out a notch and begin to justify the acquisition of multiple chins. What the hell, grow a goatee like every other man out here over thirty in an attempt to cover up said chins. I watch people get stronger and faster at the gym and I remain annoyed at my u-shaped biceps and catastrophic wheezing sessions. Here are three reasons I feel behind said 8-ball:

ThunderChicken Goes Nuts

Jeremy Skips To His Loo

G. Gets Freaktastic

You know about “Ryan” aka ThunderChicken.(no? well there’s a post here and here to catch you up. ) The other two are owner/trainers of our CrossFit gym and yes, this is how they go about their daily lives. These boys mean business. It’s amazing to watch the transformations these people can inspire in others who work out there. I am not one of those people who has had an amazing transformation, and I blame no one but me. I’ll see a little drop in weight or belt size, get cocky and wipe out 32 Guinnesses to congratulate myself. This does not lend itself to being in the kind of shape these guys are sporting. In fact, a more accurate picture of the look I’m cultivating goes a little something like this:

And deep down, I’ve been in a superfunk for the last three weeks. Not super-funky ala Rick James, I mean SuperFunk as in bummed and I can’t nail down why. Family is good, friends are fine, life’s trucking by at a reasonable pace. And then, this morning it hit me:

I’ve been missing the pain.

I’ve been missing the self-inflicted humiliation.

I’m depressed about avoiding the place that depresses me.

So I went in, and I wish I could say I suffered greatly. I wish I could say I was putting up weights that would make lesser men quiver in fear. The reality is nowhere near that. In actuality, I lifted barely above the weight of three pints of Guinness, and I gotta be honest, it felt great. It was pitiful enough that G (pictured above) made sure to mention: “Well, Uli, sometimes less is more, I guess”. So nice of him to try and find the positive – he’s a great coach, and well intentioned and all, but the truth is, I welcome the humiliation. Feeling like I have nowhere to go but up is somewhat inspirational. It’s as though each day I’m starting anew, like my body has low-grade Alzheimer’s. And I’ve been missing that feeling.

So today I started at the gym. And I do mean it, this time.

Abs To Envy

The other day, I saw a tee shirt on a fellow member of CrossFit that boldly stated

“Run Faster Than A Lifter, Lift More Than A Runner” (or something to that effect).

I kinda liked it, in that it seemed to cover several disciplines with one cutting remark. The only problem with sporting one of several types of tee shirts and shorts and other paraphernalia offered in the CrossFit world is my own personal hangup:

It never pays to boast or threaten when you can’t follow through yourself.

Since I can’t, at this juncture, run faster than lifters and I can’t lift more than a second grader, to wear a shirt declaring these attributes seems to be the acme of posing. And I just can’t tolerate posing or posers (poseurs? It seems like posing to spell it like that. I dunno).

But I digress. Some people are so immersed in singularity of purpose, everyone else looks like pikers. Take, for example, another brother of mine who goes by “Nan” around here. Here is a video of him squatting 1000lbs. or more (look for it around minute 4); this is a kid that was a rail thin teen survivor of cancer who, after completing several turns in the sands of Iraq for the Marine Corps, came back and began efforts to become insanely strong. Granted he looks like a tick and his thighs make pretty music when he walks, but the mofo is freak-strong. I might be able to out-run him but that’s cause he may well have a cardiac event beyond 20 yards. On the other hand, both Dirtbag and RoJo are committed runners, but I doubt I could outlift them. This is because Dirtbag is strong and fueled by rage, while RoJo is short, angry and a cop, thereby giving him unlimited potential to get pissed off and lift a lot of weight in a short amount of time. There’s no way I could outrun either of them, not unless I knee-capped them first.

This brings me into the class of people who like to loudly profess, “Well, I’m a jack of all trades and master of none”, as though that were something to be proud of. That’s like saying you don’t always wash your hands after using the toilet, but you usually get your underwear back up over your shins before you leave the bathroom. Great.

And so the struggle continues. I go to CrossFit most days, have what looks to be multiple seizures as I struggle through the workouts, and there have been some small gains. I’ve learned how to badger Thunderchicken without him turning on me and crushing me like a grape. I’ve learned how to properly lift for the first time in my life, even if it involves using PVC pipe instead of weighted bars. I run (let’s be honest here, I jog) up to 2 miles for different workouts, and have yet to have a major stroke – plus my two mile time is under 45 minutes, so there’s that. Best of all for the first time in many years, I’m not completely embarrassed to look in the mirror. I should be, but I’m not.

You probably won’t catch me in a trash-talking CrossFit tee shirt just yet, though.

I should probably be able to do more than two pullups first.