Pain of the Cross Train

They say no pain no gain. But little did I know the owie my training regimen would inflict yesterday.

The swimming pool is cold. Not a mountain lake, but close. I do my requisite 45 minute lap session while dragging one leg in a float to protect a recovering knee from abuse. The life guards move closer as I flail and splash like a drowning man in a hurricane. To add insult during one lap, just as I pass the diving area a humongous 16-year-old fat kid cannonballs exactly six inches from the rope and 24 inches from my head. I choke and spit, give bozo the stinkeye, but keep swimming.

This is going to do it, I tell myself as I pull water. I’ll be a manimal by next winter. Guys half my age will tremble. Women will notice. P-tex and carbon fiber will bend to my whim.

I head for the showers. The frigid dunk has me chilled and shrunk like that carrot you lost in your fridge, only to find two weeks later.

I’m maybe half a minute into letting the perfectly hot H20 limber my muscles and reduce shrinkage. Ahhhhhh….

A guy marches into the locker room with his 2-year-old in tow. Out of the corner of my eye I see the kid stop and stare into the showers.

Then, in loud falsetto that rains over the man-tribe like we’re next to the speakers at a Neal Young concert: “Daddy, that man has a tiny PP.”

I limp back to my locker, yearning anew for the first day of ski season.