#311: Spring is Here and Everybody Wants to Look Pretty

Saturday was my last race for about three weeks, so I decided to focus on the weight room this week. I warmed up with a half mile jog, then hit the dumbbells.

So I don't have big arms like
this dude. At least I have nipples.

I've been disappointed that my arms aren't big and sexy yet. This is vain and childish, I know, but when I'm flexing naked in the bathroom mirror (yes, I'm not ashamed to admit it,) I want those big bulbous triceps and hard, sinewy Popeye forearms. So I finally added curls and rope pulldowns to my routine. I did curls with dumbbells, and pulldowns with the cable machine. My arms don't look any different, but I promise you I can feel that something happened to them today.

Today, I concentrated on the upper body, by which I mean from the waist up. That includes lower back, abs and obliques (The cool "Tarzan muscles" on your sides.) It was a long workout, but I didn't take long breaks, so I got a lot done in the hour and a half I was in there. I'm starting to be able to lift heavier weights. Still not impressive, but at least not embarrassing. It's nice to see someone sit down at the Lat Pulldown machine and have to move the pin up for a change.

Tomorrow, I'll run. May even do it outside if it's as nice as it was today. Seventy five degrees, right now. Fantastic Yet, the gym was packed. I've never seen it so crowded. It was the first time the weight room felt too small to me. They were mostly slightly flabby young men who looked worried about this year's swimsuit season. I saw lots of faces I haven't seen there before, and lots of people lifting weights for the first time in a while. And I'm thinking, "Come on, people! It's beautiful out there! Why did you wait for a day like today to come inside and work out?" I thought it, but I didn't say it out loud. I'm not nearly macho enough to cop an attitude in the gym. And three months doesn't exactly make me an old timer, anyway. Fortunately, part timers usually only want to do bench presses anyway, so I just steered clear of the Smith machine and managed to avoid most of the crowd.

How not to teach manners to a newb.

Still, when a sweet young thing slaps her mat down on the floor right next to the bench where I'm struggling through dumbbell presses, and starts doing bored little crunches to the beat of whatever teen singer she's got on her iPod this week, it's hard not to drop 45 pounds on her mushy head, just to teach her some manners. But I resisted. Instead I resumed lifting weights directly above her, and when she saw what a big wuss I was, she skittered off to find a less dangerous place to scrunch.Once again, passive aggression wins the day.

Age has its privileges.

Peace,

Grumpy Old Pennsy