Workout!

Typing this blog post is somewhat difficult right now because I can barely move my arms. Seriously, it took some real effort to pick up my tablet and move it to the table to start writing. This is because I had my first workout today with my friend and new personal trainer, Manny, who is in the process of studying kinesiology, also known as the study of how the body improves itself through soul crushing torture. I get to be his guinea pig.

I had heard of boot camps before, and many of my friends will recount gruesome tales of their first workouts and how they either threw up or passed out because of them. The idea is that you go out into a park or a downtown plaza or someplace equally public and shaming and do intense calisthenic exercises until you're blue and red in the face and probably drooling because you're too tired to control your own lips. These friends tell me that this is something which, "at my age," would be good for me to do.

It wasn't as bad as they made it all seem. Sure, my arms feel like gak but overall I'm not too exhausted. Maybe it's because Manny chose to take it easy on me, or maybe my years of running gave me endurance but no strength; who knows. I did, however, get the humiliation part.

For our workout Manny chose the well-populated Lady Bird Lake running trail, which is where scores of young downtown professionals go to jog, bike, and walk their dogs. Male attire generally consists of no shirt and the shortest running shorts Lululemon has available. On one side are the beautiful young twenty year olds whose vast reserves of youth make their workouts look effortless. They're the kind who have six pack abs even though they've never done a sit up in their lives, mostly because they weigh less than a high school textbook. On the other side are the older professional men, the ones who work out ever morning at a high end spa and only run the lake to show off their hard work. Kudos to them, I say, secretly hoping I can one day afford a spa gym membership and daily wheat grass shots from whole foods.

And then there's me, the guy who has only managed to run sporadically for the last five years, busy and stressed out and probably dehydrated from too much coffee. Now, I would not say I'm unattractive; to the contrary I'm very happy with my looks in general, and I strive to maintain a healthy diet and weight (although lately strive has become the operative word). I would even go so far as to say that I'm above average in my physical appearance. But out here on the trail, compared to the other sweating, muscular, almost naked bodies all around me, I became acutely aware of every shortcoming.

"Okay," Manny said, "we'll start with shoulder push-ups."

If you've ever done Yoga, you know this as downward dog. Your hands and feet are on the ground, and your rear end is way up end the air so that your whole body makes an upside-down V shape. Then, you do push ups attempting to move only your arms. It's fairly ungraceful, made worse when you've done enough of them that your arms give way and crumple beneath you. You're cursing and struggling to will your body upwards while your butt teeters and totters in the sky. And then you notice the incredibly hot guy running beside you, the one you probably saw in the bar last week and were to nervous to approach but hoped you'd see again, and he glances at you and you realize that yes, he recognizes you too. And this, THIS would be the image he will hold of you for the rest of time.