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For months now, I've been struggling to find ways to "mix up" my workout routine. Loyal readers may recall my foray onto the basketball court awhile back or my occasional yoga adventures. Well, now that I'm everyone's favorite tennis opponent, the problem isn't so much finding a way out of my tried-and-true EDM/lifting/sometimes-stretching rut; it's all about getting back into the gym!

 

Since my Belgian Waffle revelation a week ago, I've not had a chance to visit the gym (or to eat any waffles, for that matter). I was consumed by various tasks at home over the Labor Day weekend, I played tennis on Tuesday night, had a meeting after work on Wednesday, and last night played tennis again. Not against my regular tennis buddy, M.E., but instead I squared off against an old magazine colleague of mine, J.W., who apparently reads these pages from time to time and, noticing my current obsession, challenged me to a match.

 

J.W. is a kind-hearted soul who, I figured, would show some mercy on an elderly player who also has fed her a good deal of freelance work over the years (I'm just sayin' . . .), so I accepted her challenge and we met at the lovely Nokomis tennis courts after work last night. I also figured I needed some more practice before my scheduled match with the ultra-competitive M.E. on Sunday; he's been playing several sets of doubles each week and on Tuesday it showed -- his serve is getting faster and more accurate, and even though I played pretty well, he still beat me 6-3. (His Achilles has healed also, I should point out. . . and he's seven years younger than me.)

 

Anyway, it turned out that J.W. and I were pretty well matched. Neither of us has a big serve, relying instead on solid ground strokes, so we had some great baseline-to-baseline rallies, and we each hit our share of winners. In fact, J.W. is kind of a machine on the baseline -- she doesn't make a lot of unforced errors. Which is great fun, if you can keep up, which I mostly did through the 11 games we played. She went up 2-0, I rallied to win the next two, she went up 4-3, at which time I noted with some false bravado that I'd have to win the next three games to take a 6-4 set.

 

It nearly proved prescient, as I proceeded to take the next two games, losing only a single point. But, at 5-4, my game suddenly deserted me and I put up only weak resistance as J.W. surged to a 6-5 lead. We didn't play the tie-breaker, as it was getting dark and J.W. was nursing a bit of a strained hamstring, but I was confident that, had we continued, my superior conditioning would prove pivotal to the outcome (ha ha).

 

And, speaking of superior conditioning, I'll be heading cheerfully back to the gym tonight for a little cardio and some stretching. I might even venture down into The Pit to do some squats and deadlifts. I gotta get ready for my next match.

I recalled on Saturday morning that, contrary to the post below, I had sort of resolved to drag out my old hockey skates and get out on the ice this winter. (I had actually communicated the resolution to my fitness guru, SW, in a moment of weakness -- making it all that more difficult to ignore.)

A bit of history: After years spent bouncing basketballs on Saturday mornings at my local grade school gym and perfecting my jump shot in my uncle's driveway, the National Hockey League came to Minnesota in 1967, and my best friend (who sucked at hoops) and I transformed ourselves into puckheads. Every night after supper, we'd slap on our breezers and pads, grab our sticks and walk down to Hillview Park, where we would lace up our skates and chase the puck around the rink along with whomever happened to show up that night. Sometimes, we'd have nine or 10 or more players -- of all ages -- crowding the ice on either team, creating a divine sort of anarchy -- avoiding the little kids, crashing into our peers, and always keeping the puck on the ice (nobody was wearing a cup, you know).

The warming house was always populated by our neighborhood's more adventurous girls, Marlboro-puffing vixens who inhabited a world far more mysterious than any hockey fantasies my sports-obsessed friends and I could conjure. So, it all made for some magical winter nights.

I played a couple years of park and rec hockey in high school and one particularly embarrassing intramural league game at Williams Arena at the U of M (I'd neglected to sharpen my skates and spent my dwindling shifts sliding around as if I were wearing boots while deflecting pucks into our own net) before giving up the game in my mid-20s. I still loved to skate, though, and My Lovely Wife still speaks of the time in the late 1970s when, at a skating party with a gaggle of local bon vivants, I cast wild aspersions on my carefully constructed literary-revolutionary identity by casually carving figure eights on Lake of the Isles  -- while skating backwards.

But, I've been out on the ice only a handful times in the past 10 years, so when I sat down late on Saturday afternoon on the wooden steps leading to the the Lake Nokomis rink to lace up my skates (the warming house, of course, was closed -- budget cuts), I really didn't know what to expect. And that's a good thing, because if I'd had any idea how awkward it was going to feel, I probably would've stayed home.

Thankfully, there was no one else on the ice to watch me totter about, propelling myself speculatively -- prospecting for some sense of balance. Should I lean forward? Crouch more? And what do I do with my arms? For a while, I felt like I shared the impending tragedy of a toddler's first steps.

But, after a couple of turns around the rink's big oval, I was starting to get the hang of it again: leaning and pushing, leaning and pushing, arms swinging , body swaying, and blades skimming along -- frictionless against the frozen track. I was working up a bit of a lather after a few minutes; a healthy breeze greeted me after each half-circuit, forcing me to push through the oval's home stretch. It felt good, though. Despite the rough ice, the wind and a rapidly forming blister on the outside of my right ankle, this was actually kind of enjoyable.

And this seemed to be working muscle groups that I didn't even know existed. I could feel it in my lower back, my glutes, quads and knees -- especially my knees (but not in the way I felt it when running). Maybe even a little bit in my core, actually. This can't be a bad thing, I thought, as I marveled at the pink sunset on the west side of the lake. Then, coming out of the second turn, wind at my back, I was suddenly greeted by a glorious full moon hovering just above the eastern horizon. MLW had mentioned the arrival of the "perigee of the Moon" (she knows about this stuff), the closest encounter with the moon in 2009, which presents a fuller, bigger moon than you're going to see the rest of the year.

I'm not accustomed to these sorts of magical moments. I could've just as easily caught a blade in a rut and tumbled face-first onto the merciless ice. Or turned an ankle. Or skidded over a bump and torn open my kneecap. (At my age, you think about these things.). But, no -- here I was, gliding around this oval in nearly perfect silence beneath this glorious full moon feeling like I was, oh, maybe 45 again.

So, I coasted over to where I'd left my boots and, with more effort than you'd expect from a 45-year-old, sat down and pulled off my skates, checked my new blister and slid on my boots, welcoming their offering of stability.

I was recalling those long-ago boot-clad treks home from Hillview Park, skates hanging from my hockey stick, when I came upon a park police car that was just exiting the parking lot. No ticket on the Crapmobile. Hmmm. The half-buck I had reluctantly surrendered for an hour-long slot on the blacktop turned out to be a smart move. Magic.

My motto: Make friends with new machines.

Well, I didn't get to the gym on Wednesday (worked too late -- not enough time for a good workout. . . . so, sue me! Geeze.), but I managed to get downstairs last night for a little sweat-a-thon. I did 25+ minutes on the treadmill while watching CNN talking heads lip-synch something about the Obama-Clinton race, which for some reason prompted me to hit the "incline" button a few times. And, about 15 minutes into my session, I inexplicably broke into a run. Was this a sympathetic response to Hilary's uphill battle for the nomination?

Anyway, my heart rate was creeping into the mid-140s (coronary territory???) and I was sucking wind and Wolf Blitzer was segueing into a story about John McCain's medical records (71 is old?), all of which kind of took the wind out of my sails. Defeated, I slowed to a walk, pondering my own mortality and the civic value of soundless TV news, before switching off my virtual runway and moving on to better things.

Last week sometime, a dizzying array of new resistance machines arrived at the club, so after nearly eight months of learning how to use the old machinery without hurting myself, I'm suddenly back at square one. For most people, this does not pose much of a problem. The hulking, tattooed denizens of the weight room seem to instinctively know which machines do what to their impossibly buff bodies; they simply bend the machines to their iron will. Other, less imposing specimens seek out a nearby helpful personal trainer and simply ask their advice. I, on the other hand, wander aimlessly amid the shiny white monuments, squinting at the inscrutable hieroglyphs designed to explain the machine's proposed relationship with the user's body. It's as if I'd stumbled upon a trade show for tool-and-die machines or the latest in Romanian commercial bakery appliances. No, I do not ask for directions.

Instead, I climb on the most familiar-looking pieces of machinery and crank away, marveling at how smooth and silent the transaction feels. Poundage that felt oppressive on the old machines I can hoist almost effortlessly. I did have pasta for lunch (see "Superfood?"), but that can't entirely explain how easy this feels tonight. I pile on an extra 10, even 20 lbs. more than I'm accustomed to, and, 10 reps later, it's: Whoa! I'm da man!

It momentarily occurs to me that different resistance machinery could register different results, but I quickly dismiss that thought and consider, just for the briefest instant, venturing over into the free-weights area, where the real men and their tattoos lurk. I even think, for the tiniest of nanoseconds, that maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't be totally out of line for a guy my age to get a tattoo. (Why should my daughter be the only one in the family with one?) But, just as suddenly, the thought fades, and I'm back on the ab cruncher thingy, wondering about this new pain in my lower back.

Way across the room, Obama's on CNN again. Skinny guy, I'm thinking. Probably no tattoos. Someday, maybe, the most powerful man in the world. Hmmm. . . .