Friday, Feb. 18, 2005
Dear Diary:

My gym empties out around about 11:30 in the morning. The morning trainer leaves, most folks go home for lunch, and the afternoon trainer doesn't show up until noon. I've been scheduling my workout so that it ends right about then and I can take care of My Dark Need.

For a few weeks now the guys I work out with have been doing impromptu pull up contests. For those of you who don't speak fluent gym, to do a pull up you grab two handles that are sticking out of a piece of gym equipment way over your head and you pull yourself up so your chin crosses the bar the handles stick out of.

It's kind of like a chin up, only difference being the grip.

It takes tremendous upper body strength to do a pull up. Only the strongest guys at my gym do more than five in a row. I now desperately yearn to do a pull up. I'm not greedy. One pull up would be enough. Is this too much to ask of the universe? Is it? Huh? HUH?

The first time I tried to do a pull up I made the mistake of doing it in front of the guys. Why was I that stupid? It's one of those unanswerable questions.

I jumped up slightly to grasp the handles and pulled with all my might. Did I raise my body? Even a smidgen? No, no I did not. To the great hilarity of the guys, I dangled from those handles, arms fully extended, with all the grace and agility of a dead fish.

A sweaty dead fish.

Did the guys give me encouragement for having the gumption to try? Oh puh-LEESE this is not the W Channel here, this is a gym. No, I became the brunt of their teasing. I can't walk into the free weights section and not be asked how my pull ups are coming, which is inevitably followed by snickering.

Snickering.

Fine.

So I've been waiting until the gym empties out and working on building the muscles I need to do a pull-up. How do I do that? Well I drag one of the weightlifting benches under the pull up bar and climb up on it so that I'm standing several feet off the ground. I grab the handles and take a little jump so my chin is level with the bar supporting the handles, the place where I'd end up if I could do a pull up.

And then I bend my knees, cross my feet at the ankles and lower my body with excruciating slowness until my arms are full extended. Rinse and repeat. I can now do this three times in a row. It half kills me, but I can do it.

See, that's the secret to building pretty gym muscles. F'rinstance, when you do a bicep curl, it's not the motion of pulling the dumb bell up that builds your muscle�it's how hard you resist it going down after you've lifted it.

Shut up. I'm not freakishly obsessed with this muscle business. I can stop. Anytime I want to.

Maybe.

I'm guessing that when I get to the point of being able to do about 10 or so of my, um, reverse pull ups in a row then I should have enough upper body strength to do one full pull up.

Please, please let this be true. Because the snickering? Getting on my last nerve.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 206.47 miles. 10 per cent rubber duck Duckage. My joy knows no bounds.

Goal for 2005: 1,250 miles - 2000 kilometers


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