April 2009 Archives

So, I skipped the gym on Friday but made up for it on Saturday. Not on the lifting front -- unless you count flipping burgers on the grill (yum!) -- but I got plenty of cardio.

Weekend mornings around here tend toward leisure: tea and the newspaper, speculation on whether The Boy (AKA Martin, 18) will rise in time for dinner, and perhaps a trip to the co-op to restock the pantry. But Saturday, My Lovely Wife had other ideas. So, we climbed on our bicycles and headed (into a fierce northwestern wind) for the downtown library, some 6 miles north -- with a breakfast stop at the Citizen Cafe ("Food for the People") on 38th Street, about a fourth of the way to our ultimate destination.

Properly fueled (try the Organic Scramble), we resumed our journey into the intermittently gale-force winds, and a half-hour or so later found ourselves rolling past the Metrodome, when my cell phone rang. It was my older brother, The Siding Mogul, inviting me to join him at the Dome later that evening for a Twins game. He always has great seats (who knew vinyl siding could be so lucrative?), so I happily agreed to meet him later -- just a few blocks from where I was standing at the time.

We resumed our trek into the wind tunnel that was 3rd Street and eventually coasted to a stop at our new, cantilevered downtown library, where we intended to rest our weary knees and dive into a little local history research for MOQ, the quarterly zine we publish. I was happy to use the elevator to get to the Special Collections section on the fourth floor.

An hour or so later, we were back on our bikes heading south, past the Metrodome, wind at our backs, knees happily pumping away as we zipped over the Sabo Bicycle Bridge (just for fun), under the Lake Street light rail station, and along the Hiawatha Avenue Bike Freeway toward home.

All along the way, I'm thinking: Am I going ride all the way back to the Metrodome in a couple of hours? There's always the train, of course. And the forecast spoke of rain. But the train is so packed at the Metrodome station that I'm always forced to walk to the next station up the line to avoid the chaos. Wouldn't it be nice to just jump on the bike and pedal home? But, then I'd have to buck that wind going in, though it would be at my back going home. You get the idea.

We fired up the grill and enjoyed the aforementioned burgers, MLW departed for her daily bike ride to the coffee shop, and I was left to ponder the imponderable (see above). I was supposed to meet The Siding Mogul "around 5:30" and it was already closing in on 5. I could walk the four blocks to the train station and be there in plenty of time, but I grabbed my rain jacket, stuffed it into my basket and started pedaling instead.

The wind was still an affront to all bicycling humanity (at least those of us heading north) and I could feel my hammies burning after just a few blocks. Though I've made the trip downtown hundreds of  times over the years, I really had no idea how long it might take me to cut through the gale, so I was checking the time at every opportunity. Around 38th Street, my phone rang. It was The Siding Mogul letting me know that he was running late.

I caught my breath, downshifted into a more comfortable gear, and pedaled slowly on. It was barely 5:15. I rolled up to the Dome a mere 15 minutes later, slightly stunned by how quickly I'd covered my third 6-mile leg of the day. The Siding Mogul was nowhere to be seen, of course, so I locked up my bike and spent the next half-hour smugly congratulating myself on my athletic prowess and the brilliance of my transportation choice.

The Siding Mogul did have great seats. The Twins pounded on the Angels. And three hours later I was back out on the sidewalk unhitching my steed for the gallop home. Bonus: It was not raining.

In fact, it was a gorgeous evening, and I flew down the Bicycle Freeway with much more joy than effort, covering the fourth of my four 6-mile trips that day in what felt like record time. Only when I closed the garage door and strode toward the house, however, did I begin to feel the creakiness in my left knee.

The next day, the back of my knee was swollen and tender, and I confined myself to my desk chair for most of the day. And it was raining today, so I left the bicycle in the garage. It's supposed to be sunny tomorrow. But I'm thinking 5 miles, OK? And I think I'll skip the stationary bike at the gym, if you don't mind.

I was back in the Pit Monday, lifting and sweating and feeling generally OK about this fitness thing, when I ran into Robyn Wells, an LTF personal trainer who I met recently through my rugby-playing colleague JS. Robyn is a 20-something powerhouse athlete who specializes in teaching us lesser beings how to get the most out of their workouts. And she generously offered to help me out.

Now, anyone who's at all familiar with my peculiar fitness journey understands my fitness personality. To review: I'm a 57-year-old guy with a bum knee and rusty ankles who can't run, hates to stretch and heads down to the gym two or three times a week with only the vaguest idea of what is about to transpire. I have no plan, few goals beyond remaining functional into my twilight years, and only a modicum of discipline.

All this I confessed to Robyn when we met Wednesday evening for our consultation. And, to her credit, she did not put down her pen, crumple up the sheet of paper on which she was listing my defects, and send me away. She led me over to the EDM for a brief warm-up, after which we descended into the Pit.

I am not a confident fellow in this atmosphere, as you might imagine. So, you might think that having an actual uniformed P.T. at my side would lend a certain credibility to my efforts: You know, a guy working with a P.T. might actually know what he's doing; he might be serious about this stuff, a force to reckoned with. That sort of thing.

Or not. I mostly worried that Robyn was attracting a bit more attention (Duh!) than I would normally receive -- which, of course, added a certain amount of pressure to avoid humiliation.

And that turned out to be not that big of a deal, since she didn't seem at all convinced that I could lift much of anything. At the bench press, she started me with a naked barbell. Same with the barbell squat. I was prepared to be indignant and slap on a couple hundred pounds and reel off four or five sets without breaking a sweat, until she pointed out how bad my form was and the myriad ways I could injure myself if I didn't learn how to lift properly.

When I showed her my deadlift form, in fact, she was so alarmed that she found an altogether different piece of equipment -- a rectangular frame with barbell-like protrusions on which the plates sat and handles on the sides, all of which is designed to be lifted from inside the frame -- and urged me in no uncertain terms to abandon my former approach.

I was off on my overhead press, as well: slightly bending my knees and opening my chest kept my belly from unwanted exposure. And she showed me a more effective way to do tricep extensions (laying on the bench).

Only my beloved biceps curls seemed to be in working order.

Humility is not a bad thing. It's a good way to cope with one's limitations. And I have a fairly robust capacity for humility, in my humble opinion. But I have to say that I left the gym that night feeling every one of my 57 years. Not decrepit. Not ancient. Not completely irrelevant in a youth-crazed, age-phobic, botox-and-silicon-injected world. Just kind of old, kind of pathetic.

Which, of course, I am. Especially when you consider all the elements required to create a serious competitive athlete -- which I am not. My young P.T. offered me a tiny glimpse into the discipline, intelligence and devotion real athletes need, and her advice will no doubt make my middling workouts more productive -- and my body less injury-prone (thank you for that). But at some point during Wednesday's session I realized that the distance between me and a real athlete can best be measured in light years. And that made me feel a faint nostalgia for those years so long ago when I might have considered myself up to this sort of challenge.

(Disclaimer: The above is a slightly delusional form of nostalgia. I've never been a particularly disciplined athlete, except maybe in my youthful fantasies.)

In fact, I'm going to skip the gym tonight and take a leisurely bicycle ride home. I probably won't even break a sweat. Next week, I'll get back at it. My P.T. says I should try out the spinning bike. Break out of my routine. I just might take her up on that.

Day 6 of the Great Food Chronicle Experiment has now come and gone, and one very clear pattern has emerged: I don't seem to eat very much. After my Tony Soprano dining extravaganza last Friday, my calorie intake went like this: 1,697, 1,972, 2,034, 1,936, 2,049, and 1,704. I have been consciously avoiding refined sugars (no dark chocolate Snickers) and limiting myself to one or two glasses of wine in an evening. But it hasn't exactly been a  hardship.

And when I weighed myself at the gym tonight, I had lost a couple of pounds, down to 162.5 lbs. I'd like to report that I'm feeling more energetic and lively as a result of this new conscious-eating exercise, but that would be lying. I'm mostly sore.

That has nothing to do with my caloric intake, though. I blame The Pit. For the past couple of weeks, I've been wandering among the burly weightlifters in the gym's sub-basement, sampling the joys of hoisting iron sans machines. And my hammies and quads are not accustomed to such rigor.

Still, I went downstairs tonight after work determined to work my way through any pain, and 25 minutes on the EDM got the juices flowing in a way that convinced me to descend once again amongst the masses of muscularity.

Like my earlier journey through the resistance machinery, I haven't had much of a routine -- just moving from station to station, staying out of everyone's way and trying not to embarrass myself too much. Until this week, when I borrowed a relatively simple routine from former weightlifting champion Marty Gallagher that he says is all us amateurs need to do to get SUPER FIT!!!

Here's the routine:
1.    Squats: You put a barbell on your shoulders and neck behind your head and squat up and down (three sets of eight reps). Tuesday night, I started at 50 lbs. and worked my way up to 70. Tonight, I started at 50 and worked my way up to 80.
2.    Bench Press: Lay on your back. Raise and lower a barbell loaded with iron over your scrawny chest. This is more difficult than I had imagined -- chiefly because that barbell full of iron does not balance by itself. It's kind of all over the place once you lift it off the rack. There is a certain incentive to keep it airborne, however, given that its hovering unsteadily up there above your chest and (gulp!) throat. I managed three sets of eight reps hoisting 50 lbs. on Tuesday; tonight I figured I'd settle for the same level of achievement, but was astonished how heavy the load seemed to be. I grunted my way through three sets of eight again, lamenting my wussiness -- until I noticed that I hadn't loaded two 25-pound plates on the barbell. I'd mistakenly slapped on two 35 pounders! (I could've been killed!) That made me feel better.
3.    Deadlifts: This is where you lean over a barbell and simply straighten up (24 times) and try to do so in a way that doesn't strain your lower back -- which is precisely what I accomplished on Tuesday, midway through my second set of reps with 90 lbs. I'd started out with 80 with the intent of adding 10 lbs for each succeeding rep, but when I felt that twinge in my lower back, I hesitated . . . then soldiered on like an idiot, finishing another set of reps with 100 lbs. My back, astonishingly, was none the worse for wear when I descended into The Pit tonight, but I decided not to push it. I did three sets with 90 lbs.
4.    Overhead Press: Holding two dumbbells at shoulder level, you simply push them skyward, taking care to avoid conking yourself on the skull during their descent. Thirty pounds in each hand is all I can muster so far, and I'm only able to hoist that poundage by arching my back in a way that causes a particularly unattractive protrusion of my belly.
5.    Triceps Extensions: Take a single dumbbell in both hands and lift it over your head in a way that suggests homicidal activity, and then lower it slowly behind your head in a way that threatens to send you backpedaling into oblivion and you've got the idea for this one. I can manage 35 lbs. on this maneuver, or about the weight of an otherwise innocent pick axe.
6.    Biceps Curls: Can I just say that I love biceps curls? So simple, yet so personally awe-inspiring? I mean who doesn't want to leave the gym every night with their biceps all taut and tingly? You feel like you can conquer the world -- like you're Superman. Or Michelle Obama. In The Pit tonight were two massively muscled, ornately tattooed guys, taking turns curling 35-pound dumbbells in each hand and exhibiting a grand sort of -- how would you put it? -- gruntability. And yet, there I was, right next to them, calmly curling a couple of 25-pounders. I could almost swagger back up the steps to the locker room.

Anyway, this new conscious eating plan, combined with The Pit, has me looking at this fitness thing in a new way. Maybe I'll even start stretching.

No offense, Tony.

As promised, I've spent the last few days faithfully chronicling my entire food intake, an exercise that has forced me to become a bit more mindful of my eating decisions even as it has revealed how circumstances can alter intentions.

Exhibit A: On Day 1, I enjoyed a nutritious breakfast (yogurt, granola and strawberries), a wholesome mid-morning snack (apple, cheese and precisely eight almond crackers) and a healthy mid-afternoon lunch (Caesar salad with a few slivers of lean chicken). I was, by quitting time, in full ascetic mode -- smugly satisfied with my disciplined food choices and looking forward to a dinner featuring perhaps a bowl of thin gruel, a crust of black bread and, as a treat, some raw cabbage to go with my glass of tepid water. Bliss!

Then My Lovely Wife phoned to say that any dining option that did not include me accompanying her to our favorite pizza joint would fall far short of adequate on this particular evening. I agreed, of course, and soon we were enjoying a tantalizing beet and asparagus salad, our favorite pie (with goat cheese, onions, portabella mushrooms, roasted red peppers and a type of sausage I can't pronounce) and a bottle of their best cheap wine. Dessert at some point became inevitable, as did a couple glasses of prosecco, and before you could say Super-Size Me! my caloric persona had morphed from Tibetan monk to Tony Soprano.

Good meal, though.

When we returned home, MLW and I each scrambled for our laptops and started logging in the damage on FitDay.com. After a promising start, my inaugural intake had ballooned to 2,300 calories -- a couple hundred more than what I figure I'll need to consume each day if I want to get a little bit leaner.

Exhibit B: My good friend, M.E., and I occasionally like to get together to watch sporting events on the television, at which time we might enjoy a bottle of beer or four. Saturday night, we caught the semi-finals of the men's college basketball tournament and he was kind enough to provide some sustenance to accompany the fermented beverages. I hadn't eaten any dinner, so the crackers and cheese were much appreciated. Good beer (not the brands that carry the word light spelled incorrectly) does, however, pack a bit of a caloric wallop (who knew?). Prior to Friday, I never gave it a second thought. On Saturday night, it landed with a thud upon my calorie-meter. Still, the lack of chocolate cake and pizza on Saturday's menu -- not to mention the prosecco and wine -- left me with fewer than 2,000 calories on my ledger.

And on both days I managed enough physical activity (according to the FitDay calculator, anyway) to burn more calories than I consumed. This, I believe, is called progress.

The numbers are . . . well, just numbers. The more powerful result of this exercise is the way it forces you to consider your food choices. Because I've committed to the tedious work of listing everything I stuff into my gaping maw, I'm feeling less compelled to forage through the fridge or the cupboard and grab whatever looks appetizing at the moment, because all those decisions will be there to stare me in the face at the end of the day. Plus, MLW and I can share our results each evening (carbs vs. protein; fiber and calcium levels, etc.), which creates a certain scientific attraction to the entire endeavor. You know, like: Where'd you get all that magnesium, anyway, and why can't I have some?

As previously noted, I'll need to persuade my inner ascetic that this is less about deprivation than about mindfulness, but I'm excited to see where this path leads in the next several weeks.

I coulda been a contendah!

The other day as I was standing on the scale at the gym (164.5 lbs.), it occurred to me for maybe the 7,000th time (estimated) that I've never had to really think about my weight. I've always been able to eat whatever I wanted and the pounds magically accrued on someone else's hips or belly. (I'm deeply sorry for that, wherever you are.) When I was a 17-year-old senior in high school, the wrestling coach tried to recruit me because there were apparently no other boys who could wrestle at 103 pounds. And I was a lousy wrestler. (My little brother later won a letter at that same weight, and I've always thought that I disappointed him by not displaying an appropriate degree of envy.)

When I met My Lovely Wife 30-some years ago, I tipped the scales at a resounding 125 lbs. I've seen pictures. "Skinny hippie" is how she lovingly described my musculature.

Anyway, I don't really recall what I weighed when I started this whole fitness adventure 27 months ago, but I know that I'm up a couple of pounds (all muscle, I'm sure)  from a year ago, when the P.T. downstairs weighed me, pinched the infintessimal amount of excess flesh issuing forth from the waistband of my extremely fashionable workout pants, and pronounced me to be in "average" condition. At that time, he suggested a particular regimen that would eliminate 8 pounds in a mere 12 weeks (!!!) and produce a leaner, stronger, more flexible version of myself. I didn't take him up on the offer, of course. That would involve setting goals and, as you all know by now, that's just not the cut of my jib.

Body image, after all, is relative. And when I'm hanging out with my over-50 pals or -- better yet, my over-60 brothers -- I've got to say I'm looking pretty good, in the sense that my belly is not spilling over my belt in a way that suggests inevitable forward motion. But, still, I'm thinking: What harm would it do to really track my nutritional input for a few weeks -- just to see if I'm moving in the right direction? It's not like I'm on a diet or anything, right? It's just about information. It might be interesting. Like when I took that nutrition class in college, where we kept a food diary and calculated our intake of calories, vitamins, minerals and various other nutrients, and I learned that I was operating on 1,200 calories a day, about half of which originated from the consumption of a certain brand of bottled beer. I liked to call it the Grain Belt Diet.

I eat a much more nutritious diet these days (though I'm still partial to Grain Belt), but everything I read about fitness stresses that you can't just exercise your way to optimal health; you have to fuel your body properly. So, why not start tracking my food intake (there's a great Web site called FitDay.com that MLW has used) to see if I can't get a little bit leaner -- just as an experiment, you understand. It's not like I'm going out for wrestling or something.