Silent judgement and poptarts

Here’s an interesting thing, last night every single person who frequents my gym with me flaked out on me.  Okay, flaked is a strong word.  I suppose these people probably have other more important things in their lives that kept them from a Monday night workout. Alas, I do not.  I didn’t get the text messages asking me about when and where beforehand so I suspected it was going to be a solo kind of night.  At points I really don’t mind all that much. Like I’ve said before sometimes just putting your headphones in and rocking out while you lift is super nice. It also allows me to easily modify my workout when machines are in use, etc.  There is something to be said for that. And I did modify and ended up doing just a smidge more.

This was last night’s workout:

I actually got to the gym and wanted to do a warm up run.  I must admit that while I was not sore from my half on Sunday, I could tell once I started running that my legs were just “tired” that they didn’t have the spring in their step that I normally have.  I set the speed to a solid 6 miles per hour and just went for it. At points it was harder than it should have been.  At points it felt okay.  Overall I managed to convince my brain to complete a 3 mile run.  This was not entirely easy, but I did it.  3 miles, 30 minutes nothing too fancy but a run nonetheless post running 13.1 miles the day before.

After my run I set my sights at the workout outlined above.  I did have to make adjustments here and there but for the most part this is the tiring and long workout I completed last night. Back and biceps.  It’s hard to quantify in words what the generally feeling/vibe at my gym is. This is old bodybuilder gym.  It’s not so bad when I am there.  I can handle it, but it’s not generally a happy place. I don’t feel a good sense of community or a general feeling of happiness while in its walls.  To be fairly honest I feel judged.  There are more and more tiny little bitchy body builders who honestly walk around with a snarl on their face and while I can’t exactly say with 100% certainty I generally have this feeling like at points they are watching and internally judging me.  I know that one could say I was just being paranoid but I honestly don’t think that’s it.  I think we have that natural intuition or sixth sense that tells us when something is funky and I just have that feeling.  I try and ignore it and press on but it creates a slightly hostile environment nonetheless.

I was doing some back exercises when the male trainer I had previously talked to about perhaps training with came up to me and was like, where are all your friends?  (Since I was solo and all and clearly everyone notices everything in the gym perpetuating my insecurity that clearly I am being watched! And mostly I work out with other people so the lack of people with me was of note)  I was like, they all bailed on me tonight, don’t know.  He was like, but you are here.  And I was like, of course, I am always here. It’s a true enough statement baring some major crisis or a vacation or I am so dog sick it’s not funny,  you will find me Monday thru Thursday at 5:30-7:00 PM at the gym.  It’s what I do.

I can’t be certain it wasn’t a tactic to butter me up or what but he then told me, I’ve noticed that you’ve been gaining a lot of muscle lately.  I mean it’s a nice compliment but I’m not sure I totally believe him.  He’s like, I can see you’ve gained muscle.  Thanks I said, and then said yeah I’ve been working on it, trying to balance the cardio and weights. Then we talked a little about cardio vs. weights and how I should be doing my cardio AFTER weights according to him.  He was like, has no one ever told you this before?  I was like no not really the most I’ve ever heard is cardio is bad, don’t do it.  He told me that cardio is fine and that was stupid of people to say that. Etc.  Once again, he was trying to give me the sale. He’s been working harder lately on selling me. 

Truthfully I couldn’t probably hire him because Amanda would just be devastated.  And I don’t think I could do that to my friend. And honestly I am not sure how long I am going to stick around Edge anyway. But for the time being I am just going with it.  Clearly I don’t exactly fly under the radar at Edge.  Clearly it is of some note or discussion my existence there at the gym and how I lead little groups of workouts. He’s not the only trainer/employee to comment.  But whatever, I am not a trainer and I don’t charge people so there is nothing wrong with what I’m doing.  I mean no one has ever told me I can’t.  In fact I see lots of people who always train together aside from me so it’s really no different.

The truth is I am pretty certain that my first love will always remain running and therefore I’d give up everything else if I had to for the love of the run.  Which is slightly sad because my body so likes bulking up and building muscle, but my heart just loves the run.  I will always choose my heart over vanity (bulking up) but I do try to have a strong mix of both if possible.

And then there is food. Oh food.  I love you way too much and you quite possibly are the bain of my existence.  You are the sole reason I don’t lose weight and can’t get smaller. I can sweat and sweat and sweat and work my ass off in the gym but it all goes away the minute I step home and get in the presence of tasty nourishment. 

I should mention that I have taken lately to having a single pop tart every night for dessert.  Recently there was  a lovely deal on Amazon for raspberry pop tarts and I was able to have like 16 boxes of 8 counts, so a total of 128 pop tarts shipped to me for ridiculously cheap so I did it.  They come in those 2 packs so for the last week or so every night after dinner me and Chris split one of the 2 packs.  I am certain a pop tart is not the healthiest of things for your body, but at least I’m only eating 1 right?  Although one pop tart is 200 calories.  But it’s totally a dessert in my opinion.  A pastry dessert and I don’t really care.  If I cared I shouldn’t have bought 128 of them, no matter how cheap they were.  This is the struggle I deal with every day.  I just plain like food.  I like bad for you food.  I try to eat as much good for you stuff as I can, but ultimately I love and crave crap food.

I am balanced and I guess I can live with that.  I haven’t weighed myself in forever but I also know that I pretty much have stayed the same looking forever so it is all working out somehow. I have decided I don’t want to live a life of depravation. That is just not any way to live at all.  I don’t want to deprive myself of the things I want and if that means I weigh 150 pounds for the rest of my life with this strong healthy body and still get to eat my pop tarts then that is okay.

I do actually feel like in the past 6 months I have gained a lot of muscle so while numbers may not reflect it any, I know there is more muscle on me and some of my 150 pound weight is attributed to muscle.  It’s hard to be too mad at yourself when you can essentially not train for a half marathon, not run that distance in like 4-5 months and just show up and  run the whole damned thing and feel fine physically afterwards.  The fact that I can crank out a solid 2:15 half on Sunday and then run 3 miles and do an hour plus back/bicep workout the day after means this body is pretty fit overall.  No matter how much extra fat I carry around from eating pop tarts and all.

I should point out that my 2:15 half time put me squarely just about dead center of the pack in all categories.  In total participants, in female participants and in my age category.  I pretty much fall a smidge over the 50^th percentile.  So basically I am an average middle of the pack runner. I can accept that. I don’t work hard enough to be anything faster than I am and I’m glad that I am at least middle of the pack.  I probably would not like it so much if I was always chasing the rear of the races.  It doesn’t matter at all, mind you.  But my ego probably couldn’t handle it.

Now I’m mostly just rambling nonsense.  Tonight is leg day at the gym, you know that day where I kill myself so that I feel the effects for like a whole week and it hurts.  I think I am going to go real light on the run tonight. Probably only 2 miles tops.  And then it’s time to get into the leg frying business. Oh joy.  Sometimes I wonder why I do the things I do. Sometimes I don’t look forward to it. Sometimes I have to stop and go, why the hell am I doing this?  The answer lies somewhere at the gym, when my sweat is dripping from my forehead and I’m pausing to catch my breath post a set of exercises, heart pounding, muscles tingling.  That moment, that blissful happiness, that high is unexplainable. That high is incomparable.  And that is why I keep coming back for more and more.