The Ravings of Demented Rabbits

Pain Is A Sign Of Weakness Leaving the Body

Or so says the shirt Laurent wore the other day, which was pretty appropriate considering what we were doing, but we'll talk about that in a bit.

I've been rather behind the times with my holiday blogging, for which I have few excuses. Christmas was, well, about the same Christmas as usual, except that Laurent came out and pretty much ran around dominating the gaming part of the evening in harsh, harsh ways. I also got a bunch of stuff, including far more books than I can concievably read in the next few days, and a variety of computer related stuff, which means that my computer is now happier, shinier, newer, and betterer than it was before. It's also rather empty, because part of moving from a 13 GB hard drive to a 250 GB hard drive involved reformatting both the 250 and the old 60. Fortunately, the only thing I lost in the whole operation seems to be my Morrowind saves. This is sad, but not as sad as, say, losing all my CC2 maps again.

Anyway. Leaping out of sequence a bit, New Year's was, rather like last New Year's, spent at Rema and Mel's playing assorted games and such. Whatever the pirate game was, it was fun. The entire other table, which was drinking and gaming at the same time, well, that was fun too. Good times.

This brings us to the part of the post where I reflect on the year a bit, and it can be pretty well summed up by saying that 2004 was pretty much my best year that I can remember offhand. Much happened. My roughest ever term in school. England, Europe, and Michigan. Graduating from OSU at long last. Meeting new friends and old friends. Gaming. The job hunting part wasn't so fun, but we're going to ignore that. In any event, it was a year well worth having. A number of people, incidentally, deserve some blame (or maybe some thanks) for this, including: Jan and Paul, for being the best host parents imaginable; Mike and the rest of the AHA group for being themselves; Stephanie for all sorts of things, but especially being a tour guide through London, Brussels, and Paris; and Whir for putting me up (and putting up with me) for three weeks. Thanks all.

Now then. So we're all sitting around at Christmas, and somehow or another the topic of the Army, Basic/OCS, and my possibly entry therein came up. From there, we moved to the topic of my being the most out of shape human being on the planet came up, and Laurent, as he likes to do from time to time, offered to help get me in shape. And, in a momentary lapse of sanity, I agreed that perhaps on that Monday we could do something about that.

Shit.

You want to understand at this point that Laurent is, among other things, a Sergeant in the Marine Corps. This is good for a whole bunch of reasons, but very bad when it comes to the part where I need to actually run and stuff. This will become apparent soon enough.

So, Monday I show up at his place, and since I lack the appropriate clothing, we drove over to Albany and hooked me up with a pair of shoes and some clothes, including the new winner of the Most Comfortable Pants In Existance challenge. That having been done, we drove over to Avery Park, where we ran through a few stretches (even I can do these!), then ran the 1.5 mile trail (jogged, maybe. Walked. Whatever. I tried though.), then jogged from Avery over to the obstacle course at OSU (which I had previously driven past and thought "Heh. Sucks to be those guys."), whereupon I got run through said obstacle course a time or two. Then we kind of ran out of light, and that was that.

We learned two things on Day 1. Firstly, there is a reason why we do not eat before doing all that running, and that is because when we feel like we're going to throw up, that's not really all that much fun. Secondly, being out of shape hurts. A lot. I wasn't really aware that my lungs and throat were supposed to burn like that.

Nevertheless, I went back on Tuesday, since, hey. How much more can I possibly hurt? Considering we went straight to the obstacle course, you can answer that for yourself.

The course looks something like this. At the start there's a fairly low log hurdle that you leap over, followed by a bar that's probably 8' off the ground or so. The objective is to run up to the bar, grab it, leap up, hook your feet over the bar, swing yourself over, and drop to the ground. That having been done, there are a couple more low log hurdles, followed by a rather larger one, which is part of a larger contraption which has a pair of bars perpendicular to you slanting away from you towards the ground. Objective is to stand on the hurdle, grab the crossbar, swing yourself up, hook your feet on the other bars, pull yourself up and through, then sort of crab walk your way down to this log, which you then walk down, fall forward onto a high log hurdle, bear hug it, and swing yourself over and down to the ground. Insert another hurdle, and then comes the wall. It's a bit more than head height, and the idea is to the leap up, grab it, and pull yourself over. You do that, drop to the other side, do some more hurdles close together, do a double barred version of that single bar up and over thing at the start, then climb some ropes.

So the idea was to sprint from one end of the course to the other, then do as much of said course as I could do in 10 minutes. Here's how it worked out.

Hurdles, well, I can't do them like Laurent, who can leap them using only his arms, but I can do them.

The bar, on the other hand, came close to defeating me. It was my best part of the first day's try, and I did it a couple times, but the second day I was reduced to trying to walk my feet up the side and doing it that way. Very sad.

On the other hand, I got way way better at the double bar-log walk-log hug thing. Swung up, hooked, pulled up, and away I went. If there is one part of that course I now feel good at, it's that one.

The wall, though. The wall kicked my ass. Leap up, hook with one arm, realize I haven't got enough upper body strength to pull myself up, fail. And so it went until Laurent actually lifted me over, except I screwed that up, and ended up in this bizzare position up top of the wall before dropping over. We'll endeavor not to do that again.

Needless to say, the double bar defeated me easily too.

We did that for a while, then did a few other assorted exercises. I still can't do pullups any better than I could when I had to do them in PE class. Dips, well, those are really hard, and just about obliterated my arms. I can do situps, but doing them when your muscles are screaming at you in pain is a tad different. Pushups? Wasn't happening at that point.

Somehow I agreed to Wednesday, despite knowing that we were going to run Bald Hill. About the only way I know to describe that is to say that one, Bald Hill is a hill, and like all hills goes up, and the going up part kind of sucks; and two, I WALKED this hill with Tali and Jesse freshman year, and it about did me in then. So I can't say I was looking forward to the experience.

I made the flat part mostly ok. Ran out of steam a couple times, but ok. Even did a little bit of the uphill part. But then my legs were like "Look. We're just not having any of this running business. You want to walk, well, we'll do that. But no running." So I had to walk most of the rest of the up part.

So before we go, Laurent's like "Well, we can run downhill. Downhill's not as hard." Little did he know that Bald Hill's gravelless trails were a mudslide. So instead, we walked downhill, and after a short little sprint once on dry ground, we walked back, and that was that.

But then I went home. And moved in tiny steps because my legs were killing me. And my pleas for the Hot Bath of Goodness were ignored by the water people, who came out to fix some stuff and turned the water off. And this was bad. But then they left, and the Hot Bath of Goodness became reality, and the pain of small forest animals was greatly relieved, and there was much rejoicing.

You know that thing about having muscles you never knew existed? That's true.

Thursday, fortunately, was nice and easy. We kicked a soccer ball around for a while, until Laurent (who not only worked out with me but on his own as well) couldn't do it anymore, and then we worked up a plan for me to follow, and it was home again.

And then I spent the last couple of days running up the annoying hill on the road, and there we are. And my neck hurts. I'm not sure what I did to make my neck hurt, but it hurts. Whatever, neck.

So happy New Year, boys, girls, and squirrel aliens.

Posted by Dwip at January 2, 2005 1:30 PM