Triathlons: Hitting the Gym

I had mentioned how I had lost my mojo. In the subsequent days since, I realized that I need exercise and physical activity like I need to breathe. I start bouncing off the walls and can’t sit still. But I don’t feel like training. I know I can do the distance: I just don’t feel like I’m excited enough to do so.

But I need to do something so in order to keep active, I’ve decided to get back into the gym. In this day and age, it has become a lot more important to me than before. I still believe in meeting people in the flesh. With social media, you can make tons of online friends in different parts of the world but I value the action of going up to someone and actually talking to them. Seeing their body language, listening to their goofy laugh, reacting to eye contact. And for me, the gym is a place where you can still do that.

The gym crowd can be broken up into a couple of defined categories.

The Gym Rat: usually men, who spend an abnormal amount of time in the gym (and don’t hold a job there) and work on the upper half of their bodies, complete disregard given to their legs.
The Alpha-Female: women who do a variety of things that seem to or does attract the attention of men in the gym. Whether it’s taking off their shirts to reveal a very toned midriff, wearing very low-cut tops to show cleavage or wearing clothing that have ridiculously non-functional bias-cuts in areas that don’t need them: on the side of the legs, over the cleavage area, etc. or doing suggestive poses or movements that are supposed to be toning exercises but are reminiscent of pole dancing done poorly.

I like watching this all go down because it makes me feel like I’m watching an episode of Wild World of Animals.

I’m friends with a guy who happens to be a police commissioner and feels the need to be packing a gun. He leaves it with the gym receptionist while he works out. I’ve asked him if he could take me to the shooting range with him so that he can teach me to shoot. He still laughs it off but I know he’ll take me to the range one day.

T-Bone is 6’5 and is the only gym rat I know who works out everything evenly. He’s got the biggest guns I’ve seen on anyone and leg presses all four racks stacked and loaded with 45 lbs disks. I like the fact that I look his age even though I’m 11 years his senior.
I think the only ones he sees eye to eye with are birds.