Main Street

I just finished a disgusting meal from one of those "Italian" pizza/pasta chain restaurants.

I am 400 km northeast of Toronto and the eatery options in this small town are limited. Such is usually the case when my work takes me on the road.

The service was prompt and polite, but that was no cause for me to order the poutine as a starter. I should have had a salad. Still, last time I checked, poutine was not typically the consistency of soup. And I should have known better than to think there is a chef north of York Region capable of making a "7 cheese ravioli." But I ordered it as my main course anyway.

It tasted like a dirty sock, and the garlic bread looked like the sole of a flip-flop.

After, I should have hit the gym adjacent to the hotel, to try and right the pungent, fatty wrong.

But it turns out small-town gyms are like small-town Italian restaurants.

Taped to the front door was a sign telling hotel guests they can use the facility only after signing a waiver. Not a great way to put a potential exerciser at ease ... Yes, you may enter, but if you lose a foot while using the wonky elliptical it's not our fault.

I walked in to find half the gym occupied by a throng of out-of-breath middle-aged women trying to keep up with a spastic aerobics instructor. Their clothes soaked with sweat, the ladies flailed their limbs off the beat of the tinny techno playing from what could only have been a Casio boombox. So close were they to complete coordination failure, I thought the odds were good one of them would tumble into the exercise machines.

Continuing my walkabout, I noticed a troublingly high number of spray bottles for cleaning sweat off equipment.

Now convinced the local drinking water was causing a hyperhidrosis epidemic, I fled to the nearest exit, and saw eight framed pictures on the wall. Every image depicted the same gang of middle-aged aerobics women in action, but in each the women were dressed in a different costume. Hockey jerseys. Lumberjackets. Togas. Mother of God.

I cannot wait to get back to my gym.

Wiped out

I have not been to the gym since last week. I blame longer-than-normal workdays and my wife being home on break from her job in Vermont, which means eating out often and a busier social calendar.

 

I could easily dismiss the feeling of guilt, knowing not every week will be as full, except for the fact that a  crushing wave of fatigue has hit.

 

I am fading by 4 pm, yawn all evening and need sleep by 10.

 

I seem to have the concentration span of a caffeinated squirrel.

 

My breathing feels heavy, as though a firm hand is pushing on my chest.

 

The thought of taking my dog on long walks is depressing. Instead, I let her out in our postage-stamp backyard, where she walks in cirlces to find a spot.

 

Could these be the signs of gym withdrawal?

 

Only now am I realizing how good exercising was making me feel:

 

I am drinking a little less, content to have a couple beers and not a six-pack. Wanting to eat better food - Vietnamese take-out instead of McDonald's. And not as quick to anger at work; my desk neighbours and boss may disagree but I think I am generally sunnier these last few months.

 

I did not expect that only three months into this adventure I would come to depend on the gym.

 

And if I want to stay awake, I had better get back.

 

Different night, different gym

During the work week, I go to the gym Mondays and Wednesdays, between 5 and 6:30.

It started out as the time tainer Joe was available, but after my sessions with him ended I kept up the routine.

And why not? I grew comfortable in that time window and familiar with the regulars. Bobby Shortpants. Guy whose shoulders are so wide and waist so thin he looks as if he has wings. And the rail-thin woman wasting away on the elliptical. I knew who I'd see and what to expect. Used to the rhythms of gym life between 5 and 6:30 on Monday and Wednesday, I knew when it was safe to go in the locker room and when it was populated with exercisers prone to aggressive nudity.

But this past Wednesday I could not make my regularly scheduled trip to the gym. No big deal, right? I went Thursday at 5 pm instead. And found my workout world had been turned upside down.

It was like a different gym. New people. Different smells. The music pumping out of the gym speakers was 80s rock instead of techno.

I began, as usual, with a brisk walk on the treadmill. On a machine beside me was Winnipeg White. It was not his sweat-soaked red T-shirt or saggy shorts that drew my attention, but his bright white legs. Not a blue trace of vein or splotch on the skin. Just featureless white legs - the kind you see in Florida on middle-aged tourists from the Midwest.

From there, I walked toward the weight room and into bottomless stare of Hungry Eyes. About 40 years old and muscular, the man made no effort to hide his interest in me. And this was while he was pumping his legs on a resistance machine. No heavy breathing or signs of exertion, as if the upper part of his body was unaware of what the lower was doing. Just staring at me.

I cycled through my weights quicker than usual to get hell out of that room.

Back to the treadmill for a jog. In front of me was an overweight man labouring on an elliptical with the elan of a partially tranquilized hippopotamus. He was leaning way back, his face curled in anguish. He was closer to a major medical event than any other exerciser I have seen.

On a Thursday evening, the smell of sweat in the gym is as tangy as always yet somehow different. I think if I spent even a minute searching for the right adjective to describe this particular variety of sweat, it would be a new professional low for me.

Back from Morocco

Eight adventurous days in Morocco - including a night in the Sahara, a drive along the switchbacks of the Atlas Mountains and four hours straddling the unforgiving back of a camel - and yet somehow this trip was the laziest, most detrimental to my health, I've ever had.

I went to Morocco for a friend's wedding. Before I left, I expressed concern about interrupting my workout momentum.

Blog readers offered advice.

Adam urged me to avail myself of the hotel gym.

For the first few days and nights I was in Marrakech, staying in what is called a "riad" - in this case a house big enough to accommodate eight thirsty friends of the groom. I knew none of them before the trip, but it happened we all shared a taste for whisky, wine and sleeplessness. There was not one night we stopped drinking before the first call to prayer bellowed across the city. For us, bedtime was usually just after 5 am. I think we were all excited to be on holiday in such an exotic place.

There was no gym in the riad.

Blog reader Mark advised: "Pushups, Situps, Bodyweight squats, Stepups, sprints/HIIT, pullups. You don't need a gym to do any of these."

In the old, central part of the city, known as the "medina," one errant step in the narrow, pebbly, crowded alleys and you get run over by a souped-up moped. A wind-sprint would have been like running with the bulls.

As for situps and pushups, I have no excuse.

Other readers recommended I pack a resistance band. I had never heard of such a thing.

I should have listened. I should have done some kind of exercise. Instead, I degenerated.

After the wedding, the bride, groom and 18 of their friends got into SUVs and headed east into the Atlas Mountains toward the Sahara Desert. I could have marveled at the scenery and struck out on mini hikes during our rest and meal stops. But I gobbled some Ativans, slumped in the back seat, hid my face under a sweatshirt and prayed for it to end. The mountain road - without guardrails, moving endlessly up, one stretch sharply curving into another above - would have caused an involuntary bowel movement without the dose of anti-anxiety medicine.

Finally, the road straightened as we neared the desert. Once at the gateway city of Merzouga, we got on camels and rode into the Sahara to a small grouping of tents set up in the shadow of a huge dune.

Forgive blog reader Adam for expecting my "desert ration" to crimp my taste for things that cause double chins. I mean, who would have expected one of the camels would have been strapped with the 40 bottles of wine not consumed at the wedding?

I even smoked some cigarettes. I don't think it's fair to say I fell off the wagon I boarded a year ago, because it did not feel like I was getting re-addicted (believe me, I know what that feels like). Nonetheless, it was easily one of the dumbest things I have ever done. To risk throwing away all I put in to quitting last February ... just stupid. Stressing about it now doesn't help. Luckily, I do not feel as tough I have to quit all over again. I am not in withdrawal.

Phew. So there is the Morocco recap. Makes you feel bloated and short of breath, doesn't it?

I went to the gym this evening and, as expected, could not lift the same weight I was lifting 10 days ago. And my 25-minute jog felt like a marathon.

But I went.

And I have to admit, I kind of missed it.

Hiatus

I am about to go to northwest Africa for a wedding. What can I say? I am an international man of leisure.

But seriosuly, I am worried about the interruption to my exercise regimen.

I will miss at least three gym sessions. And with little but eating and drinking on the itinerary for the first few days and nights of this trip, I could be faced with starting back at the lightest end of the weight stacks upon my return.

Maybe I can lessen the effects of the debauchery during the second leg of the trip ... when I will be in the freaking DESERT!

I am trying not to second-guess my decision to join a bunch of other wedding goers, also city slickers from North America, on a safari. Sounds fun, I know. Once in a lifetime opportunity, and all that.

But by now you know me. I am a nervous nelly. I need to control. Exacerbating these crippling tendencies is the fact that I don't smoke anymore. What am I going to do in the desert? I will be voluntarily putting myself without reach, alongside a bunch of people who have also never done this kind of thing, where I can't smoke and where, if something happened like I got impaled by an errant tree goat, I could do nothing but accept my fate. Sounds like a recipe for massive, stress-induced weight loss.

I will keep you posted ...

Croque Madame

I just finished eating some clumpy, tooth-cracking hippie cereal to try to atone for the excesses of the last several days.

But I fear it will take an enema, or worse, to quickly make up the ground I lost while my wife Brooke was visiting home. (For the first half of the year she works in Vermont and gets back to Toronto for a few days every month or so.)

It was a time to have fun, maybe let loose a little.

I let go of my self-respect.

Brooke arrived late Wednesday. 

Thursday morning we went to a diner where I ordered a standard but with an extra helping of meat. Two eggs sunny side up, white toast, hash browns, bacon AND sausage, and two cups of coffee.

Two more cups of coffee throughout the day.

Thursday night we went to a party where the booze was free. I snagged whatever passed hors d'oeuvres came within five feet, drank a couple fruity martini-type drinks and two glasses of wine, but mostly beer. About 10 of them.

Friday morning, more like early afternoon, at one of my favourite east side breakfast spots, I tucked into a spicy sausage and cheese omelette with a side of heavily buttered baguette. Oh, and two cups of coffee. And a mimosa.

Two more cups of coffee throughout the day. No, my teeth did not fall out.

Friday night we went to a Vietnamese place with a couple friends. Should have been a nice, light break for my metabolism. But I ordered the beef dish extra spicy, and three beers as chasers. Then to friends' house for a dessert that involved a maple syrup-based liquor.

Somehow not satisfied that I had upped my odds for colon cancer ...

Saturday morning, back to the same breakfast place as the day before, and as if drunk on grease, I ordered a Croque Madame with a side of heavily buttered baguette. And two cups of coffee. For those who have not had the pleasure, the dish is ham and gruyere on bread, with a fried egg on top.

No exercise on this day (or any of the days chronicled in this post). I lollygagged. Watched TV.

That night, Brooke and I went to our favourite pizza place, where the Number 17 is a divine feta and spinach mix, but mostly feta. Enough to fell a pony.

We each ordered a 17 assuming we would have leftovers for the next day. I ate mine and half of hers. Had a few beers, too.

 

I wish there were some machine that could quickly measure how much a night of heavy beer drinking, or a string of greasy spoon breakfasts, slows the momentum of a workout regimen. Did I, with each dribbling bite of the Croque Madame, wipe out the benefits of one of my 4 km jogs? By eating one-and-a-half Turkish pizzas in 20 minutes, did I erase the exercise gains of a week, maybe two? If I knew, maybe I would have had cereal instead.

But what fun is that?