"Try-Athletes": Strip Club

I looked down, and there was blood everywhere... & I didn't know what to do.

Earlier...

I got to TriClub tonite and Brent had saved my bike, because of course, I was running late. I was so busy writing about my love of Louboutins that I barely had time to gulp down a spoonful of chicken pot pie before I could get dressed and drive to MacIsland. So I stuffed my feet into my shoes and chatted with Kirsten for a bit, as we both wondered where Lisa was, and then we hopped onto our bikes.

We started stretching and we were worried a bit about Brent because he was pretty quiet. It turned out he was feeling barfy, but at the time, we weren't sure if he was concentrating on rev'ing up for a big race or just ignoring us. We couldn't tell.

Holly asked where my partner in crime was... I told her "JENNY!" was on the East Coast, partying it up (with Marlene, no doubt... probably getting kicked out of WalMart or something. Marlene, if you are reading this, you better settle down!)

Before long, we were off to the races. We were working our butts off! Kirsten said she was itchy, right away. That's because the blood starts rushing to the top of her skin as soon as she starts working out. That's what makes her itchy, it has to be, plus all the sweat draining out of her pores.

She also looked like she went on a bit of an acid trip, because her eyes got kind of round and bright, so I guess things were alright on her end. She is doing well with the whole TriClub business.

We were doing one of our 'Stand up and sprint on gear 12' businesses when I looked down and noticed that my left hand was covered in blood.

And my world kind of stood still for a second.

I always wondered what I would do if something like this happened... if something totally odd happened at Spin/Swim, would you stop and take care of it? I wondered about vomiting, or falling off my bike but bleeding never crossed my mind.

"Nobody makes me bleed my own blood!" as Zoolander would say.

Seriously, though, I was bleeding.

I kind of stopped for a moment, then I put my hands back on the handlebars, then I kept pedaling.

And Kirsten said, "Oh my God, Terri, you're bleeding!"

"Yeah, I know. I wonder why I'm bleeding." Then I stopped pedaling again, and looked at my hand. I actually couldn't figure out why I was bleeding, where I was bleeding from, or when I had started bleeding. Most of the blood on my hand was dry.

Meanwhile, Holly kept the class up to speed, while my dazed and confused brain tried to figure out what to do.

I'm not afraid of blood. I could wade around in blood and not worry about it. I was dazed because I didn't know what to do about it - was I supposed to stop and clean my hand or just keep going and not interrupt the class?

What was the etiquette here?

If I was home, I would just go clean my hand, and get back on the bike. If I was at a friend's, I would do the same.

But I was at a class at MacIsland. Thank God there weren't a lot of people there. Kirsten said, "I have some hand sanitizer in my bag!"

Well, that made sense to me - keep the whole thing as quiet as possible. Plus, sanitizer kills germs. That would kill any germs on me and on the bike, right?

Never mind that I had a bottle of water and a face-cloth with me, right there ON THE BIKE.AS IN, RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME.

With a bloody left hand, I stared at Kirsten, and told her I couldn't touch her bag with a bloody hand, and she said, "Whatever, I probably have whatever you have, anyway!"

Fair enough - I got the hand sanitizer.

Hand sanitizer in an open cut hurts - a lot.

I have a big gouge in my finger. I don't know where it came from, only that it happened when I got on the bike. It took me a bit of time to clean it, too, using hand sanitizer and water. I biked for a long time afterward and I had to put pressure on that gouged finger to make it stop bleeding.

We checked afterwards but couldn't find anything on the bike that was sharp. Very, very strange. I had no idea that I could do that on a bike. In the 3 months I have been going there, I have never cut myself on a rubber handlebar of a Spin bike. First time for everything, I suppose.

Lesson: if something odd happens to you while on the bike, get off the bike and take care of business.

When I got back on the bike after all of that, I noticed that people were sweating profusely from the tough workout Holly was giving them. Well, I was sweating profusely, too, but that was mainly due to the hand sanitizer seeping into my blood stream. That stinging bit of pleasantry made me overheat just a little bit.

But it's all good. It kept me on my toes.

The other sweaty people started throwing off their clothes, though, so with all those clothes flying around, I felt like I was in the midst of strippers. Tri Club just turned into Strip Club! sTRIppers Gone Wild! I wanted to throw off all my clothes, too, because I was pretty hot, but I had nothing else to take off. If I took off anything else, it would have been a bad scene for everyone. The party would have stopped. I can just hear the sound the old record players used to make when the record ended and the little arm would come off the record to indicate that it was time to flip the record - game over.

Kirsten told me that she brought an extra pair of pants tonite just in case she ripped her first pair. You have to see K - she is a tiny little sprig of a girl, first of all, so I am not sure why she is worried about ripping the guts out of her pants. But sure enough, the extra pants were in the bag, along with the hand sanitizer. She said earlier, when she was getting ready, she had put on a pair of shorts for running, and the arse was ripped in them, so she didn't want to take any chances (there was no warning of not putting this in the blog, K, so I thought it was fair game :-P ). For the record, I don't know if she busted the arse out of the shorts while putting them on, or if it was a pre-bust kind of deal. Just sayin'.

:D

* I have a friend, who will remain unnamed, who just started a book-club and has left her very first book-club book in a bar. She didn't read it yet, just accidently (?) left it there. I think that is priceless. That actually makes me happy, even though I am not sure why - I think it is the humour of the situation - there are too many grave things in this world... let's lighten up a bit.

I'm selling all my books tomorrow, in fact. I don't read them anymore... time to pass them on. That's how I'm lightening up... I've figured out what I want to do, and what my short term plans are.

-> making better meal plans - in progress

-> walking Harley everyday - in progress

-> de-hoarding the house - in progress

-> finishing the show - in progress

-> making a plan to get on my feet for running - in progress

I started researching a lot of stuff for running. It's going to be a slow process for me. There is a lot of info out there about running - it's not just: start running & it'll work itself out... I'm already making mistakes and I've only ran a few laps. No wonder I'm hurting myself. I'm doing it wrong. Yeah, you can run wrong. Some stuff I'm doing right - like, I run with a midstrike / frontstrike - I don't hit with my heels, which is good... but I have always been better barefeet, so I might do better if I had minimalist shoes rather than the ones I bought, the strong support ones, which is what I thought I needed. We'll see about it.

I'm going to buy another bike for this summer so I can do some regular biking around town. It won't be TriClub biking - those guys are too hardcore for me, yet. But I'll keep up the Spin class stuff and probably join a yoga class. Maybe I'll join a 'Learn to Run' class.

Yeah, I know what I am doing.

"Try-Athletes": Guess Who's Back?

... back again... Holly's back... back for Spin!

I thought I was heading down to MacIsland for a grueling night of negotiations again, and figured this time, my luck would probably run out, but the girl is back in town, the girl is back in town!

And she made us work, too.

Jenny said this was the hardest she ever worked, until I reminded her how hard the first week was. Then she re-evaluated her situation and amended her statement. This was the second hardest time she ever worked at Spin, she decided.

I got out of rehearsal late and had to "dirty boot'er" home, as Jenny likes to say. I think this means "go quickly" in Nova Scotia language. I am from Newfoundland and we use "boot'er" to mean "go somewhere" and this also can mean you are going somewhere relatively quickly, so I guess adding "dirty" at the beginning means you are going at supersonic speed, or something.

I drove home as quickly as I could, given the speed limit and road conditions, since it is winter again in Fort McMurray. Yes, it is April 11, and just 26 hours before, I was out in shirtsleeves, taking my dog for a walk, so it was quite warm the day before. But when I drove home, there was snow on the ground and people were whipping around like maniacs. And I may or may not have been one of them.

I got into the house at 6:10. I threw a frozen M&M chicken breast into the microwave and set it to defrost for 5 minutes. I ran into my bedroom, changed clothes, and came out to put the chicken to cook for 2 minutes. I ran back to the bedroom, put in contacts, ran back to flip the chicken for another 2 minutes and get Harley his chicken dinner. I grabbed everything else I needed and was off to the kitchen again.

I ate like a seagull, as my grandfather would have said. There was no real chewing involved, more like huge gulps of hot chicken, and I'm not 100% sure that it was fully cooked but I'm not dead yet so it might have been ok. I did have some pain in my abdomen on the bike, but more about that later.

I grabbed water and was out the door in a shot, leaving the house at 6:26... not bad - I saw Harley for less than 16 minutes in the last 13 hours. I'm such a good Mama. No wonder he humps everything.

I drove downtown and soon got stuck behind someone who was trying to turn left by the bank next to Earl's on the way down to Franklin. Seriously, people... when traffic is heavy, turn left at the lights on Franklin and then backtrack around. Otherwise, you hold up traffic right to the highway because the Franklin traffic doesn't care that your one lonely vehicle is trying to cross two bustling lanes of traffic. Use common sense, and stop holding up traffic. So I went around all this traffic because my patience was wearing thin.

I got to MacIsland and chatted wth Kirsten, Brent and Nancy. Then Jenny arrived and we all had a yarn. That means "chat" in Newfie-speak. I figured I threw in some Nova Scotian lingo so I may as well even out the East Coast terminology somewhat. I don't really know anything particular to use from PEI or NB, though, unless you want me to talk about potatoes, Anne of Green Gables, the Acadians or the Miramichi.

Lisa showed up and got out her hardcore Athlete Gear. She has all this because she actually used to be an Athlete. So she just busted out all of her old stuff, whereas we wear stuff from WalMart and just sweat out all the MacDonalds and pizza and chicken wings and donuts. Whatever, our arses are there.

Jenny said she started acid-trippin' right away. She said after awhile her vag was busted so badly that it felt like it was turned inside out. She is worse than Harley and his turned-inside-in penis.

Kirsten seemed pretty happy to be there. She had a smile on the whole time. I think she enjoys it, and her facebook status said afterward, "I am a tri-club rock star. Our crew is awesome. Just sayin'." So I think it is going well from her perspective. That is good - not everyone likes it enough to stick with it.

I didn't find it that difficult on the bikes, although we were givin'er (now THAT's the Newfie term) for over an hour. It was hard... make no mistake about that. The song Sandstorm will forever remind me of two things: (1) the 2010 grad: the kids had a lack of voter turn-out and it nearly ended up as their grad song, and (2) biking on the Spin Bike when Kirsten got the giggles and Holly made everyone go up a gear because, as Holly said, "If you can laugh, you're not working hard enough!"

Sandstorm stresses me out because it means business: I think cadavers would get amped on Sandstorm.

Check it out:

http://youtu.be/2HQaBWziYvY

Jenny went to get water and came back, and effectively started her bike over, just as she always does, because her bike is possessed. It constantly flicks through the gears (although it stays in the right gear, the number just doesn't register on the little screen properly), nor does it give the kms correctly. It always flicks back and forth on her numbers. So we could be biking an hour, and Jenny might have 'biked' 4km. Meanwhile, she has voyaged halfway around the world and back, and her intestines are hanging out on the floor.

Kirsten said she is going to do the 'Try the Tri.' This actually looks perfect for us when you see it in print. We won't be ready for this year's TtT, but Kirsten has / had it in her head that she will be, so she is game. Jenny and Lisa asked her if she had her bike ready, and she smugly replied, "You don't need a bike. It's at MacIsland. Where are you going to ride it - around the library?" She obviously thought they were going to use the Spin Bikes. Oh no, they made it clear: there is going to be a track outside for the TtT. That's a different story, then.

Jenny of course, had to make fun of her, and of course, I had to join in, and Lisa had to laugh. Jenny said she could just see Kirsten now, with her little tricycle (TRIcycle), streamers blowing from the handlebars, little bell ringing, beads on the spokes and all. That would be perfect.

After nearly 65 minutes on the bike, I had completed 20km (I know that's not much after 65 minutes, but give me a break here) and I felt like I had legs of lead. I actually started to hallucinate through some of it, and when I was looking around I was wondering why I was seeing so many bright colours. I snapped out of it a bit and realized it was because so many people wear bright shirts. It's like a kaleidoscope of flowery brightness in there sometimes.

I started to get a pain in my side and I was wondering if the chicken might have been uncooked, but then I realized that food poisoning might take a little longer to set in. But then I wondered if vigorous activity would make it happen faster, and I wasn't sure. Then my knees started to give out. Then Jenny said she thought she had lung cancer because she found it so hard to breathe, and that maybe I had knee cancer, and she got mad at me because she said I put too much pressure on my knees with the bike.

Holly basically told me to shut up.

Sweet Lord Almighty.

At about 8pm, people were starting to leave in droves. I told Jenny I thought the gym was closed and she started laughing so hard, I thought Holly was going to come over and knock us out. So I turned away from her and pretended I didn't notice her laughing her arse off. If she gets caught, fine, but I'm having no part of it. I'll choke myself before I make everybody work harder - I don't know if they would kill me or shake my hand. I can't really tell with that crowd. If they want to work harder, well then I will raise a little hell back there.

We were supposed to go for a run and Jenny and Kirsten took off but Nancy and I got to chatting and ended up walking. Then we did stretches and core stuff. It's all good.

I think it's nice to switch up Coaches once in awhile - the same way as it's good to switch up teachers - it doesn't hurt to get new perspectives and change is good. It keeps you on your toes.

So Holly, welcome back :)

"Try-Athletes": Let Me Hear You Scream

"Hey, Point au Mal, you are a good runner!" said the coach as he sprinted away. He said this after he caught up to me, between a couple of laps of alternately sprinting and regular running.

This was obviously not today, or yesterday for that matter.

This was about 16-17 years ago, when I was testing out a Tae Kwon Do class and we had to run laps for warm up. It seemed normal to run like that back then - as kids, we were poor and we ran around a lot, doing obstacle courses, etc. for fun. So we were in shape and had endurance.

Since then, I have matured into my Slothhood. It is now difficult to run, and sprinting would probably kill me.

Today, I huff and puff like the Wolf in The Three Little Pigs when I run. After a little while, I get dizzy, I feel like my nose is going to bleed, and the room starts to spin just like when we first started on the Spin Bikes. So while the Spin Bikes were Vag Busters, this running is a Brain Buster for me.

The girls seem to be doing great with this.

I am out of shape in the greatest proportions possible. This is ridiculous. It feels like my body is being resistant to being fit, when in reality I know it is just hard work.

I actually start to see different colours when I push myself to run. This can't be good. But whatever, I run as much as I can, until I feel like another few steps will either buckle my knees or cause me to pass out, whichever comes first.

But the good news is that Bikes got easier after a couple of months, so if I stick with it, the running should get easier, too. There is no way this would be easy just starting off. I knew that.

I went downtown early today to buy new sneakers, and I will try them out for a bit to see if they help. They were alright today but didn't seem to make too big of a difference. Working out in the morning makes a bigger difference for me.

However, because I was late in getting to Try-Running, I didn't get the same instructions as everyone else... i.e., he has to give you a certain time to run, not the 'run a lap, walk a lap' business. Well, I ran a lap, walked a lap, then I was getting ready to run a lap again and Jenny asked me what I was doing, so I turned to tell her I was getting ready to run, and she told me not to, so I was confused. She said he had to tell us when to run, and she told me to get off the track, so I was completely confused.

I was also completely in the way of the real runners.

I tried to get out of the way, but the real runner in the blue shirt ran in the same direction I was walking, and so I moved to the other side, but so did he, and so it felt like we were playing supersonic defensive sports because he was FAST and by fast, I mean he was running toward me full speed and it didn't look like he was going to slow down anytime soon. I can't imagine him wanting to slow down, either, since they were being timed, and so while we were trying to avoid each other, I couldn't get out of his way, and I thought for sure I was going to trip him up and there would be Hell to pay.

Before I knew it, I got such a fright, that I screamed.

Ladies & gents, I'm not a screamer. Usually.

But so it goes. I froze in place, as did nearly everyone else on the track, and maybe even he did for a split second, mid-air, and then time moved on and he ran around me. Jenny looked shocked, and nearly died laughing. She then grabbed my hand and dragged me over to the railing and hissed at me to get off the track. "What are you doing?!?!" she said, in a fit of laughing. "I was trying to run," I feebly tried to explain myself but she cut me off by saying, "That guy probably wants to kill you because you cost him a half a second of time." I thought this might be true but now I think it's better to have cost him that and cost myself my dignity than both of us a trip to the hospital because of any other shenanigans I might have accidently caused.

I brought Harlequin for a walk when I got home. He likes that a lot and now that it's warmer, we can start going again. I wish I could commit myself to going early every morning with him, but it's true that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. When the alarm rings at 5am, I really hate to get out of bed, especially if I couldn't sleep all night.

But a routine isn't made like that, and his extracurricular activities with Cookie Monster would probably end if he was getting walked more.

That might be a couple of good challenges for me:

- (short term) walking Harley every morning before work

- (long term) getting the running under control before September.

I'm thinking about it.

"Try-Athletes": Rock, Paper, Scissors

I got lucky tonite.

Or so Miguel said.

I won against him in a game of RPS. He suggested it, so there can be no complaints. We started warming up on the bikes and before a few minutes had passed, he was setting us out to run, which I refused. So we had a stand-off.

I am pretty good at confrontation, but he suggested RPS pretty quickly, and then that ended after some tense moments. I love negotiations, especially when we can get through them like this. This was a good call. Darcy suggested Best 2 Out Of 3 but he had wandered off and I told her to "Shhhh!" by that point.

There was no going back on the RPS win.

However, Kash and Lisa got on the track and got going. They did really well. Kash ran 13 laps altogether before she came back to the bike. Kash was terrified that Miguel was going to tell her off every time he walked by but she survived the 'ordeal' as I shall call it. She says she is not good with confrontation, and as it seems, confrontation to her is him asking how she is doing or him checking the gear on her bike.

L'avatar aka Lisa's facebook status reads that she "... jogged 14 laps (we were supposed to do 21) but cycled 10 Keiser units in 18.46. Now if only she could swim a lap without 1/2 drowning she'd have this whole triathlon thing on the go."

She is doing a great job, AND she sounds a bit like a Newfoundlander. She is developing a 'Newfie' voice in her writing - haha.

While they did all this running around, I kept working on the old cardio on the bike. I figure I may as well do that rather than just walk around, run a lap, walk around, run half a lap, etc... I may be fooling myself but when I feel the running, I'll do it. Until then, I won't. And I don't really know why I am justifying myself, because I don't need to. So bugger off. How about that?

I told Miguel I am lazy. He said I wasn't, and that I am just hard on myself. He said that lazy people just wouldn't come to Tri Club. Well, let me assure you, Readers of this Blog, I am Lazy. Make no mistake about it, I am lazy. I have stayed home from Try out of sheer laziness or exhaustion, I'm not sure which. Some people might work through their exhaustion - not me! I just go to sleep!

So all you dear Readers, do not make the mistake of running around thinking that I am all energetic and the opposite of lazy... I will take the Lazy Road if I can. And you probably would, too. Unless you are the Ironman or the affiliates of the Ironman.

After all the real Triathletes ran their hearts out, they came back to the bikes. Some of them got back on to wait for others in the meantime. After a bit of pedaling, we then started some core workout stuff. And by 'some', I mean even Brent was complaining a little bit. And if the Ironman is saying he is done, well then, we are all done.

I don't mess with the Ironman.

And I don't remember to count anything so if someone says I am finished, well then, I am finished. Or if I die of exhaustion first, then so be it. We had to do a hundred of this, and some of that. Some of the things I hadn't even heard of. Whatever 'bout it.

And sometimes I take a nap in between exercises. But I do like the Core exercises, even though they are tough.

I need to work out early in the morning. This 'going to work out before bedtime' is pretty crazy business. I'm exhausted, after working all day and volunteering for 800 hours, and then visiting my dog, trying to get a bite to eat and THEN going to work out. That is ridiculous. Half the time, I'm trying to eat a peanut butter sandwich, banana or energy bar while I am driving to MacIsland. This isn't healthy. Then I come home and eat cereal. I am on a Skeletor diet; I am going to die of starvation here. And after working out at nearly midnight, I'm awake until 2am.

PS: I do not exaggerate at all. Not one bit.

OK - PPS - I went back and reread this - I didn't exaggerate anything except the '800 hours' in this previous paragraph. All the rest is true.

On the way out, Darcy and I talked about this blog. She said she laughs at it because it's a no-holds-barred kind of deal. Yeah, when you hang out with me at Try, that's kind of the way I roll. If you say, "Don't put that in the blog!" I probably won't but I don't hold much back about myself. Jenny doesn't hold much back, either. We don't really care. We think you need to see the down and dirty, farty, smelly socks, sweaty armpits, vomity lips, starving stomachs, acid trippy eyes and all the rest of it that we are going through in our quest to get healthy. If you get it in your head to do this, then you need to know this is not all daisies and rainbows and unicorns. This is a 'no time to yourself, pants stuck in the crack of your arse, boobs sweaty in the middle, itchy all over from sweat, runny nose from overheating, you probably won't lose weight but your fat will migrate all around' kind of good time.

It's a dirty process. Whatever, 'nothing good comes easy', or so the saying goes.

I took my 7lb white-furry dog on a walk through the cleanest part of the parking lot today. He trotted around like a little horse. I think he thought he won the lottery. He is being a better boy over the last couple of days. I'm sure he isn't on his best behaviour. He probably just hasn't found anything to get into.

Anyway, summer is coming!