Antisocial Behavior: Week 3 of a Hard Training Cycle Makes it Hard to Live
Though I managed to handle all of the training successfully and finished all of the workouts throughout the past three hard weeks, several signs point to the definite need for a rest week. First of all, over the last week, all my food started to taste like cardboard and did not want to digest properly. I had to force myself to eat, knowing that the food was necessary fuel for my training. Secondly, any kind of social interaction became excruciatingly painful! If I were to ask myself, "What do I want to do for fun right now?" the answer would be, "I want to lock myself in my room, lay on the bed staring at the ceiling with 'Gotta Get Away' on Repeat 1 on my CD player."
Last Saturday really finished off Training Week 2 in a major way. My alarm went off at 4:15 AM, so that I could get ready for the 5K inline race in Draper. I finished the race in 4th place, behind three guys who had taken the previous day off from training. My legs (and a certain part of my anatomy which the Japanese call, "oshiti") were blowing up, on the other hand, because I had done nearly 3 hours of jumps and a weight program the day before.
After the race, I rode my bike up Big Cottonwood Canyon, finished that ride around noon, and raced home to get ready for the Warped Tour - a punk rock festival-style show that was taking place at the Utah State Fair Park. When I arrived home to get cleaned up, I found that my former West Michigan teammate Chris Weaver had gotten into town and was looking for a place to stay. Chris had just escaped from the cruel tutelage of "Kim Jong Il of Marquette," and he was looking forward to training with the FAST Program instead. I offered him the last available room in my house. "Go ahead and move in," I said, as I ran out the door wearing a wife-beater shirt, combat boots, and a new pair of bondage pants.
On the way to the Warped Tour I picked up my friend Anna and her 16-year-old niece, KiElys (our requisite teenaged excuse for going to Warped Tour, and a great kid besides!) We arrived at the State Fair Park a little after 2 PM, and spent the next 6 hours baking in the triple-digit heat and choking in the dust, but having a great time anyway.
As far as the bands went, we excitedly discovered the Horrorpops, were rather ambivalent about Fallout Boy, enjoyed Billy Idol, and, finally, hurried across the fairgrounds to see the Offspring, where I handed off my water bottle and shoved my way to the front of the mosh pit. I managed to get a pretty good view for about 2 songs (and suffered greatly for it!) before climbing on top of the crowd and getting tossed over the barrier.
The next day, Anna invited me to her mom's birthday party, which was being held at a new buffet-style restaurant that had been carved out of the old 49th Street Galleria roller rink. It was kind of creepy going in there, because I had once skated an indoor inline training session there, back in 1995. It's funny - several ice speedskaters admit to doing JUST ONE indoor inline practice! All I remember is that, after the practice, some little kid dropped his helmet, and when it started rolling away, I stopped it for him. Then, the little thug punched me in the head!
After dinner, we played the free round of mini-golf that came with our meal. Surprisingly, I played well. "Gotta get ready for those charity golf tournaments for when I win the gold," I joked, thinking about Derek Parra practicing his swing.
Anna asked me if anyone had ever invited me to play a charity golf tournament.
"Who, me? Yeah, right! Putt for the Cure!"
"OK," she went on. "Has anyone ever asked you to carry their bag?"
(No respect, I tell you! No respect!!!)
As the third hard week of training progressed, I was surprised by my ability to handle the workload, considering how I felt; I was walking around with a constant sick feeling in my stomach, and, outside of practice, my level of activity was extremely low. Was it the heat? Was it dehydration? (Ha-ha-ha! Is the fluid-balance joke on me, after all?) Seriously, though, fluid balance is important, but here in the desert, it's more about proper hydration throughout the WHOLE day, not just during one single training session.
By Wednesday, I was desperate to cool off and anxious to occupy my hands with some useful but not too exhausting activity, so I went to the Oval's skate rental shop to assemble some of the new speedskates that had arrived. Down there in the "skate rental cave," I managed to make some money, maintain my status as an Oval employee, stay cool, and hide from the world.
As the final week of hard training wore on, Friday's weight workout approached. At Monday's weight session, my teammate Andrew and I had had the Oval's weight room to ourselves. I had brought some of my CD's along, and by the end of the workout, I had totally sold Andrew on the Offspring's greatest hits. He said, "You're spreading the gospel according to Dexter!"
On Friday I had hoped to continue Andrew's punk rock education, but it was not to be. The weight room was full of FAST Team members, and they had monopolized the stereo system with a mix of early-'90's hip-hop. With an inward groan, I dug out my MP3 player and stuck the headphones in my ears.
Things were actually going along just fine until that *(insert gratuitous insult relating to one of the FAST Team Members)*, in an obvious attempt to ingratiate himself with the great Derek Parra, cranked up the volume on the weight room stereo, subjecting us all to roller-disco favorites such as "Bust a Move" and "Ice Ice Baby."
I didn't say a word as I loaded up the leg press with just over 4 times my body weight, turned up my own MP3 player, and pushed that leg press to the tune of "All I Want" until my face turned as red as the rubber mats on the floor.
Finally, after patiently dealing with more than an hour of hip-hop, I decided it was time to make FAST share the stereo. I waited for the then-playing TLC song to end, then popped open the 5-CD changer to find the following discs inside: Hip-Hop Mix #1, #2, #3, #4, #5. What the hell??? Did they really think we were going to listen to that crap the whole, entire time? "OK, guys," I thought, "You deserve it. Let's see how you like System of a Down."
Not twenty seconds into B.Y.O.B. (which happens to be in the rotation on at least one local radio station), Derek comes SPRINTING over to the stereo to push Stop. "I'm not listening to that!" he yelled. "It's messing up my workout!"
"Come on, Derek," I protested. "You can let me play JUST ONE song."
In the end, Bart made him let me play "just one song." And so it was, that after over an hour of hip-hop, we got 3 minutes of System of a Down. FAST Trainer Harry commented, "These guys are so good! How many albums do they have out?" FAST skater Parker said, "I love this song! It's on my iPod." And Derek Parra went right on throwing a fit.
I mean, sure, Derek may have been a roller rink DJ in another life, but times are changing. Hey, even I thought "Ice Ice Baby" was a pretty cool song when I was 13 years old! I know Derek is reluctant to give up control of the weight room stereo, but, after all, he doesn't own the place (and SOMEBODY should make it clear to him that he doesn't !) And, after all, these are the days when roller rinks are being converted to All-U-Can-Eat buffets!
On Friday night, realizing that it might do me some good to try to have some fun, I forced myself to go to a Russian party with Boris. At our dinner table, we met a doctor from Uzbekistan - an otolaryngologist who is doing research at the U of Utah on the regeneration of vocal fold cells. How fascinating! His work is still in the tissue culture phase.
As the topic of conversation changed, my mind began to wander back to my days as a graduate student, and my inexplicable failures at tissue culture. For some reason, I had an unbelievably "brown thumb" at tissue culture! One of my bosses once said, "Does this always happen to you when you do tissue culture? I've never seen anything like that before." (Oh, you mean those surly little clumps of HT-1080 cells, floating around and practically glaring up at you through the microscope?)
Aimlessly, I wondered what would happen if I were assigned to maintain a culture of vocal fold cells. Trying not to burst out laughing, I concluded that after a few passages, they would probably all begin to sound like Scott Stapp of (the former) Creed!
"HURRRRRRRRRRRR-dy HURRRRRRRRRRRRRR-dy HURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!"
Imagine that. We could implant some random guy with my Scott Stapp vocal fold cells and have a pseudo-Creed reunion, just in time for the 1500 meter victory ceremony in Torino! I can see the headlines now:
"Parra's Repeat Performance Prompts Creed Reunion; Women's Champ Rodansky Flings Herself Into the Torch."
Though I managed to handle all of the training successfully and finished all of the workouts throughout the past three hard weeks, several signs point to the definite need for a rest week. First of all, over the last week, all my food started to taste like cardboard and did not want to digest properly. I had to force myself to eat, knowing that the food was necessary fuel for my training. Secondly, any kind of social interaction became excruciatingly painful! If I were to ask myself, "What do I want to do for fun right now?" the answer would be, "I want to lock myself in my room, lay on the bed staring at the ceiling with 'Gotta Get Away' on Repeat 1 on my CD player."
Last Saturday really finished off Training Week 2 in a major way. My alarm went off at 4:15 AM, so that I could get ready for the 5K inline race in Draper. I finished the race in 4th place, behind three guys who had taken the previous day off from training. My legs (and a certain part of my anatomy which the Japanese call, "oshiti") were blowing up, on the other hand, because I had done nearly 3 hours of jumps and a weight program the day before.
After the race, I rode my bike up Big Cottonwood Canyon, finished that ride around noon, and raced home to get ready for the Warped Tour - a punk rock festival-style show that was taking place at the Utah State Fair Park. When I arrived home to get cleaned up, I found that my former West Michigan teammate Chris Weaver had gotten into town and was looking for a place to stay. Chris had just escaped from the cruel tutelage of "Kim Jong Il of Marquette," and he was looking forward to training with the FAST Program instead. I offered him the last available room in my house. "Go ahead and move in," I said, as I ran out the door wearing a wife-beater shirt, combat boots, and a new pair of bondage pants.
On the way to the Warped Tour I picked up my friend Anna and her 16-year-old niece, KiElys (our requisite teenaged excuse for going to Warped Tour, and a great kid besides!) We arrived at the State Fair Park a little after 2 PM, and spent the next 6 hours baking in the triple-digit heat and choking in the dust, but having a great time anyway.
As far as the bands went, we excitedly discovered the Horrorpops, were rather ambivalent about Fallout Boy, enjoyed Billy Idol, and, finally, hurried across the fairgrounds to see the Offspring, where I handed off my water bottle and shoved my way to the front of the mosh pit. I managed to get a pretty good view for about 2 songs (and suffered greatly for it!) before climbing on top of the crowd and getting tossed over the barrier.
The next day, Anna invited me to her mom's birthday party, which was being held at a new buffet-style restaurant that had been carved out of the old 49th Street Galleria roller rink. It was kind of creepy going in there, because I had once skated an indoor inline training session there, back in 1995. It's funny - several ice speedskaters admit to doing JUST ONE indoor inline practice! All I remember is that, after the practice, some little kid dropped his helmet, and when it started rolling away, I stopped it for him. Then, the little thug punched me in the head!
After dinner, we played the free round of mini-golf that came with our meal. Surprisingly, I played well. "Gotta get ready for those charity golf tournaments for when I win the gold," I joked, thinking about Derek Parra practicing his swing.
Anna asked me if anyone had ever invited me to play a charity golf tournament.
"Who, me? Yeah, right! Putt for the Cure!"
"OK," she went on. "Has anyone ever asked you to carry their bag?"
(No respect, I tell you! No respect!!!)
As the third hard week of training progressed, I was surprised by my ability to handle the workload, considering how I felt; I was walking around with a constant sick feeling in my stomach, and, outside of practice, my level of activity was extremely low. Was it the heat? Was it dehydration? (Ha-ha-ha! Is the fluid-balance joke on me, after all?) Seriously, though, fluid balance is important, but here in the desert, it's more about proper hydration throughout the WHOLE day, not just during one single training session.
By Wednesday, I was desperate to cool off and anxious to occupy my hands with some useful but not too exhausting activity, so I went to the Oval's skate rental shop to assemble some of the new speedskates that had arrived. Down there in the "skate rental cave," I managed to make some money, maintain my status as an Oval employee, stay cool, and hide from the world.
As the final week of hard training wore on, Friday's weight workout approached. At Monday's weight session, my teammate Andrew and I had had the Oval's weight room to ourselves. I had brought some of my CD's along, and by the end of the workout, I had totally sold Andrew on the Offspring's greatest hits. He said, "You're spreading the gospel according to Dexter!"
On Friday I had hoped to continue Andrew's punk rock education, but it was not to be. The weight room was full of FAST Team members, and they had monopolized the stereo system with a mix of early-'90's hip-hop. With an inward groan, I dug out my MP3 player and stuck the headphones in my ears.
Things were actually going along just fine until that *(insert gratuitous insult relating to one of the FAST Team Members)*, in an obvious attempt to ingratiate himself with the great Derek Parra, cranked up the volume on the weight room stereo, subjecting us all to roller-disco favorites such as "Bust a Move" and "Ice Ice Baby."
I didn't say a word as I loaded up the leg press with just over 4 times my body weight, turned up my own MP3 player, and pushed that leg press to the tune of "All I Want" until my face turned as red as the rubber mats on the floor.
Finally, after patiently dealing with more than an hour of hip-hop, I decided it was time to make FAST share the stereo. I waited for the then-playing TLC song to end, then popped open the 5-CD changer to find the following discs inside: Hip-Hop Mix #1, #2, #3, #4, #5. What the hell??? Did they really think we were going to listen to that crap the whole, entire time? "OK, guys," I thought, "You deserve it. Let's see how you like System of a Down."
Not twenty seconds into B.Y.O.B. (which happens to be in the rotation on at least one local radio station), Derek comes SPRINTING over to the stereo to push Stop. "I'm not listening to that!" he yelled. "It's messing up my workout!"
"Come on, Derek," I protested. "You can let me play JUST ONE song."
In the end, Bart made him let me play "just one song." And so it was, that after over an hour of hip-hop, we got 3 minutes of System of a Down. FAST Trainer Harry commented, "These guys are so good! How many albums do they have out?" FAST skater Parker said, "I love this song! It's on my iPod." And Derek Parra went right on throwing a fit.
I mean, sure, Derek may have been a roller rink DJ in another life, but times are changing. Hey, even I thought "Ice Ice Baby" was a pretty cool song when I was 13 years old! I know Derek is reluctant to give up control of the weight room stereo, but, after all, he doesn't own the place (and SOMEBODY should make it clear to him that he doesn't !) And, after all, these are the days when roller rinks are being converted to All-U-Can-Eat buffets!
On Friday night, realizing that it might do me some good to try to have some fun, I forced myself to go to a Russian party with Boris. At our dinner table, we met a doctor from Uzbekistan - an otolaryngologist who is doing research at the U of Utah on the regeneration of vocal fold cells. How fascinating! His work is still in the tissue culture phase.
As the topic of conversation changed, my mind began to wander back to my days as a graduate student, and my inexplicable failures at tissue culture. For some reason, I had an unbelievably "brown thumb" at tissue culture! One of my bosses once said, "Does this always happen to you when you do tissue culture? I've never seen anything like that before." (Oh, you mean those surly little clumps of HT-1080 cells, floating around and practically glaring up at you through the microscope?)
Aimlessly, I wondered what would happen if I were assigned to maintain a culture of vocal fold cells. Trying not to burst out laughing, I concluded that after a few passages, they would probably all begin to sound like Scott Stapp of (the former) Creed!
"HURRRRRRRRRRRR-dy HURRRRRRRRRRRRRR-dy HURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!"
Imagine that. We could implant some random guy with my Scott Stapp vocal fold cells and have a pseudo-Creed reunion, just in time for the 1500 meter victory ceremony in Torino! I can see the headlines now:
"Parra's Repeat Performance Prompts Creed Reunion; Women's Champ Rodansky Flings Herself Into the Torch."
posted by Eva at 11:47 AM
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