There's an alpha guy among the weightlifters I see at my gym, a man who looks to be somewhere in his mid-40's or so. Although many of the men he lifts with are half his age, he's by far the strongest and in a hierarchy determined by strength, that makes him top dog.

As the weightlifters were coming in to the gym this morning, I was standing in front of the reception desk holding up and critically eyeing some green leotard-style workout pants. There's a 30 per cent off sale on workout clothes at my gym this week. "I'll take it," I told Kim.

"Oh damn," said Alpha Guy. "I was going to buy them."

I turned to look at him contemplatively. "You would have looked very fetching in them, too," I said.

The weightlifters let out a roar. The unexpected word cracked them up big time.

They headed off to the free weights section while I went over to elliptical machine and spent 35 minutes sweating my guts out to my latest workout CD which just came from Mis. Sweating is the operative word here because this is one high octane playlist with The Ramones, The Cure, Mixers and my new favourite song in the world "Girl all the Bad Guys Want" by Bowling Soup. Another Ten Beads o' Sweat winner, for sure.

Then, with the first part of my cardio done, it was time to head to the free weights.

I think I've talked before about how the guys in a free weight area can sometimes make a woman feel um, unwelcome is a strong word, but they can definitely make you feel inferior and not worthy. After all, that's the portion of the gym where strength counts, and there are definite strength differences between the sexes.

It takes me a fair bit of psyching to do my free weight routine anyhow because in the end it's all about how much physical discomfort I'm willing to endure. See, in order to build strength you have to push your muscles as close to total exhaustion as you can bear. By doing that you create micro-tears in the muscles and in repairing these tears, your body adds muscle mass.

But the thing is, if you're stretched out under a weight bar on an incline bench or a bench press, and you lose control of your bar as you explore your limits, then you can drop considerable weight on yourself. I'm up to 65 pounds on each of those and while that's nowhere near what the men are moving, I could still break something if I dropped that much weight on myself.

Normally, you have a spotter with you when you do this kind of strength training. The spotter stands ready to catch the bar when you push yourself as far as you can go. That way you won't get hurt if your arms suddenly give out and you can't get the bar all the way back up. If a trainer is free, then I'll drag one over to help me. If they're tied up then I don't push myself to exhaustion because I don't want to ask a stranger to break up their workout to help me with mine.

The trainers are often busy.

The guys, of course, workout in a pack and they just routinely spot each other. They make far faster strength gains than I do because of that. They also psyche each other, urging each other on to extra reps despite the pain involved. Having others encourage you makes you go further than you might otherwise. (A small group of us has been finding that out over at Five Hundred).

Okay, so today I settled into the incline bench. I've been doing three sets of ten reps and today began to move it up to three sets of 12 reps. It doesn't seem like much, but trust me, pushing 65 pounds up in the air two extra times gets the old heart beating, the forehead sweating and the arm muscles burning.

By the last lift of the final dozen I was closer to the edge than I should have been without a spotter and instead of settling the bar in the supports neatly, it clattered loudly as I wrestled for control. Alpha Guy materialized and eased just enough weight off that I could set it in place.

I thanked him and began to leave the bench. "Not so fast," he said. "You can do two more reps."

My upper arms were burning. I was tired. The rest of my workout stretched endlessly in front of me. I did not want to do two more reps. And I know this is insanely stupid, but I felt that if I refused to at least try those reps then I was losing a chance of some sort. So I shook my arms out and then grasped the bar, inhaled, and pushed as hard as I could, exhaling along with the effort.

I got the bar up, but my control was poor and the bar wobbled badly both rising and falling.

"One more."

Another deep breath, another push while exhaling and this time I couldn't move it up more than a foot. He grabbed the bar just as my arms were giving out and hoisted it up back to the supports.

"Nice job."

I felt as if I had been given a body-sized gold star.

Oh be quiet.

When I later came back to do the bench press, one of the guys came over and spotted my lifts without me asking. Hrm. Maybe I have a crack at being a part of the pack.

Part of me is going, "Oh, man, this is so cool. MAYBE I CAN PLAY WITH THE BIG KIDS."

Part of me is going, "Oh wait. These guys work stupidly hard and push themselves right to the wall. This will add whole new dimensions to the phrase 'world of pain'. Do I want to work that hard?"

Truth is, I don't know.

Guess I'll find out next time my path crosses with theirs.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer 25.12 miles - 40.42 kilometers
Goal for 2003: 500 miles - 804.5 kilometers