"Could I sweat any more?"

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Though I dislike air conditioning, I dislike not being able to sleep even more.  I’m a warm body.  At eighty, I’m sweating and the ceiling fan just won’t answer the call.  It was headed for ninety and was supposed to stay there through tomorrow.  The AC was staying on.

At work, I began sweating through my clothes by 8 a.m. and kept it up throughout the day.   As Justin and I put the finishing touches on another piece of fencing, I knew I needed to get inside and to some cooler conditions.  We hit the tack room and the water cooler and looked for something to fix.

“Snap that shelf off the brackets,” I said, nodding towards a shelf above the garbage can.

“Huh?  Why would I do that?” Justin asked.

“Because then we’ll come back in here and fix it for a couple of hours while I cool off,” I said. 

He didn’t break the shelf and we went back to the humid pastures. 

I left work wondering what I should do to myself for a workout.  I kept thinking of Kathy in Oregon where she was probably climbing K2 or riding her bike 2,000 miles…all uphill…and thinking she’d be kicking my ass on any ride we did when she returned unless I began to get totally serious.  It was about 110 degrees when I picked Dakota up and headed for the park to hike.  I pulled my pack from the trunk, slipped it on my back and covered myself in bug spray.  Who was I kidding?  That spray would be sweated off at the top of the first hill and then those biting bastards would have their way with me.  I walked over to the rock in front of my car for the first set of step-ups.

I was thinking of doing thirty per leg for starters, but then thought ‘what would Kathy do?’ and went to forty.  As I headed up the trail on wobbly legs, I began contemplating beating my last outing when I’d don 400 step-ups and nearly puked.

I climbed the first big hill and had sweat flowing so freely that my shorts were already saturated.  This was likely to become a ‘squishy shoe’ day and those really suck.  I hit station two and did another forty.

I felt like I was swimming as much as hiking, the air was that heavy with humidity.  It was starting to feel good, though, and that’s a positive sign.  I was drinking from my Nalgene liberally, but there was no way I was going to keep up with the water loss.  I’d refuel later. 

It was a quiet evening with most sane people at home, wisely enjoying their air conditioning or swimming pools.  Dakota and I were enjoying our over-heated, sweat drenched bodies.  When I hit 400 step-ups and was still feeling like I had some fuel in the tank, I began planning for 500.

Somewhere along that final mile of the hike, I regained my senses and ended up with 460 step-ups and about eight pounds less water weight than when I’d started.  I put several towels over my seat to absorb some of the perspiration before climbing in the car.  They tried, but they were clearly overmatched.

Once home, I made a smoothie and began to relax.  It felt good to know that at some point I could write about this workout and brag about what a beast I was to have persevered through heat and step-ups.  It paled in comparison to whatever Superwoman was doing in Oregon, but in my little corner of the world, it was a good thing.

Hike/step-up duration:  90 minutes.

Training Heart Rate:  100-150 bpm.

Calories burned during workout:  900.