Help; I Can’t Pee

I do pushups on my back

                                  

For some people being a little slack with exercise over the holidays means using both hands to do push-ups. For those of us who aren’t insane it means pushing ourselves around the pool on an inflatable chair. It’s the only way I can train over the Festive Season because gyms frown on filling your water bottle with mojitos. Naturally, when I arrived at CrossFit Platinum yesterday for my first class of the year, it was already brimming with the first type.

Stick it to me

I was a little intimidated, as I always am, to be in a room full for men and women showing way more flesh than fabric and whose legs (as my dad puts in) could kick start a Boeing. No matter; there are a few familiar and friendly faces and of course, The Duke, or as people who don’t name their equipment know him, “a broomstick”. The Duke (who’s the stiff, straight-laced type) is there for people like me who are still learning the weight lifting moves. People who don’t know a clean from a deadlift. People who were a little shocked the first time they heard they were doing snatches.

Thankfully this year I’m not the only one hitting the wood and not the weights; there were loads of us, clustered in corners and looking a little shell shocked. I was relieved to see that several of them were guys, bursting at the seams with muscle. If a boy who could do pull-ups with two of me on his back is working with a stick, then I’m proud to be seen with The Duke.

Baby you were born to run. Or not.

My confidence lasted until the “warm up”, which was a run to the end of the block and back. Now there are many scenarios in which I could picture myself running, most of them involving hungry bears, but like sticking knives in toasters and licking razor blades, it’s something I try to avoid. Unfortunately Julian takes a multiple choice approach to training and ticks the “all of the above” box on your behalf. So I ran. And walked. And ran. It was long. It was agonising. I got back to the gym stone last. I looked and felt like a steamed dumpling. We were 5 minutes into the class.

Hey, I can feel my legs.

The rest of the class was great. The Duke and I rocked overhead squats! I did sit ups out in the open air on a concrete porch while other members of the broom brigade were doing them on the grass or wherever else they could find a spot. You know you’re taking strain when you’d rather just lay thrashing about in the dirt, right where you did your box jumps, than make the 2 m trek to a mat.

So with the first class of the year down it’s Jo 1; Squats 200. I left feeling fantastic.

I’m in trouble today though. I knew it the second I hopped up out of bed without a hint of pain. That means my body’s pissed enough at me for making it sweat that it’s waiting until it’s stored up enough pain before ambushing me with it all at once. And that means I’ll feel fine until I get up from my desk to go to the bathroom; at which point the muscles in my legs will turn to concrete and every nerve ending will declare mutiny and start firing flaming arrows in retaliation and I’ll hobble over to the bathroom, bent double and gritting my teeth, edge down the stairs sideways, and then hang onto the door handle to lower myself into the P position because my legs are refusing to squat even one more time.

Thank g_d I work in a warehouse; if anyone hears sudden shrieks of pain they’ll assume the forklift claimed another victim.

Yup, 1 class down and I hope The Duke is being faithful while I’m at work.