Workout

Tonight's workout was tough, as always.   It started with a circuit of bench presses with 25 pound dumbbells; pulling a duffle bag filled with sandbags and attached to a rope halfway across the gym; and  doing 600 meters on a rowing machine.  The weight room was filled with people and everyone had to skip over the rope as I was pulling the duffle bag or wait for me to take a break.  I was more than happy to be courteous and drop the rope every chance I got to let the traffic through.  All the while Trainer kept yelling -- go faster, pull harder!  Once I got the duffle bag to one side of the room, I had to then run the rope to the other side and begin pulling the duffle bag in the other direction.  The barefoot ladies by the Pilates studio looked at me in horror.  I imagine it was quite a picture.   I asked Trainer how heavy the duffle bag was and he said 150 pounds.  I expressed my disbelief at having to pull more than my body weight.   Trainer's response was to add a 45-pound sand bell on top of the duffle bag.   Another lone lady in the weight lifting room decided to make a couple of trips across my rope, telling me, turning away from Trainer, that what I was doing looked tough and that I could probably use a break.   I guess she thought she was helping and since there were only two of us there, we had to stick together.

After the bench presses, the sandbag, and the rowing machine, came "wall climbing" on the floor and step ups on a bench with kettle bells.  All to get the heart rate up.   A couple of weeks ago we got talked into doing a test at the gym to show us our heart rate zones and mine are pretty high, which means that I have to work very hard to break into Zone 2, which is the only zone that makes Trainer happy.  At the end of my workout I could barely make my arm muscles execute the task of taking off the heart rate monitor watch off my wrist.  In the meantime, the kind lady from my duffle bag battle was leisurely lifting ten-pound orange dumbbells and writing in her pink journal in between.  No one was yelling at her to go faster or to pull harder.  I was jealous.

The reward for all this was a protein shake.