"Are you lookin' at me?"

Friday, October 28, 2011
You’ve heard me say it before, but today’s experience confirmed once again why I think there is no better place to work out than the North Chagrin Reservation. 

I was half way through my Survival Workout and hiking up the trail from Clear Creek to the cabins when I noticed a very strong, musky smell.  It wasn’t terribly foul though I did wonder if something had died.  It seemed to be close by, so I began scanning the woods on both sides of the trail as I walked when suddenly I noticed something through the trees staring back at me.  I’ve seen hundreds...maybe thousands...of deer in my time in these parks...but the animal standing in the woods no more than twenty feet from me was the most beautifully sculpted buck I had ever seen.  It was a big deer with a gorgeous rack and spread and it looked menacingly powerful as it peered through the fall foliage separating us trying to determine if I was something about which he should be concerned.  He was easily twice the size of the does I see so often – a truly magnificent specimen.  I stared back at him and began to speak...I’ve got it in my head that I’m kind of a ‘deer whisperer’...and told him how impressed I was and...if it wasn’t too much trouble...could he please drop his antlers somewhere I could find them next Spring.  He never took his eyes off me...they seldom do when someone is near...so after a few minutes, I moved on to allow him to continue doing whatever he was up to with the odor he was emitting.

I did manage another strong workout, cracking 200 push-ups for my three set total for the second time in three workouts.  I hurried home after the final set so I could grab a quick shower, make some chow and head for Don’s.  I wanted to be there in time to catch the first pitch of the seventh and deciding game of the World Series.  I held little hope for the Rangers.  They’d been within a strike of winning their first World Series in the 51-year history of the franchise in both the ninth and tenth innings the night before and had failed to get it done both times.  Momentum had swung to the Cardinals I believed, though I decided watching the game with Don would make the best of what I was sure would be a bad situation.  And it was.

As is often the case, game seven was anti-climatic with the Cards winning their 11^th World Series behind ace Chris Carpenter, who was pitching on three days’ rest.  The Rangers went down with hardly more than a whimper for the second year in a row.  What’s really sad is not their loss, but the fact that diehard fans, like me, must now wait five full months for April and opening day. 

Don and I made the best of the evening with our constant criticism of managerial moves we’d have made differently, discussion of baseball stats of the all-time greats, trying to figure out which team had the most World Series wins after the Yankees, checking out ‘The Man Song’ on You Tube and other important things of that sort.  He’s always got some game he insists I play...with volumes of hand-written stats he’s kept on every competition ever done...and this time it was darts.  I destroyed him on his home turf though he complained that his form was a little off as a result of the boot he was wearing on his right foot to protect the toe he’d broken from stubbing it on a table.   

I hustled home at the game’s conclusion.  It was late and tomorrow I’d have to be up early to pick up Paul so we could go to breakfast at Kleifeld’s before heading to Tiffin for the High School Regional Cross Country Championships.

Survival Workout duration: 60 minutes.

Training Heart Rate: 100 to 150 bpm.
Calories burned during workout:  600.