Remembrances of workouts past…The Tired Hedonists peek inside Alis Near Room
9 June 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Had my first 90-degree work-out of 2005 yesterday in the unheated garage gym out back of the Mountain Compound. It was a sauna. Now that Im old, I actually like sauna-like training conditions as it seems joints lube easier and warm muscles fire far more explosively than cold and stiff muscles. Anyway, as I sat on the duct-tape covered incline bench, my mind wandered back a few years back when Chuck Deluxe lived in the neighborhood. We used to have some hellacious training sessions because he was so freaking nuts and game to try any ridiculous physical activity I would suggest. We used to walk for miles and miles in the deep woods on fire trails that bisect and trisect the endless mountain ranges in our neighborhood. Primitive cardio: hike up and down steep trails till you drop: it was exhilarating as well as exhausting. Breathtaking scenery, no human or mechanical sounds. Back in those days wed have to carry walking sticks for viper protection, Id pack my lightweight .380 Berretta if it was snake spawning season. My 110-pound German Shepard was alive and we must have been one hell of a sight traveling over those mountain swells. That was our cardio our weight training was also Purposefully Primitive.
I get bored so easily that we decided to try this crazed Russian ultra-high volume program that Pavel had just translated and passed on to us. We were self-admittedly mentally sick gluttons for self-induced punishment and would goad each other on like grammar school boys on the playground. We decided (well, actually I decided) that we would test ride this vicious program using squats. If my memory serves me well, the 1st week we did nine sets of 9-reps. Week two was eight sets of 8-reps, week three 7×7, week four 6×6. We were training in July or August and the gym thermometer routinely registered 90 to 105 degrees. Trust me, we glistened. So I remember Deluxe weighing 208 hitting 440 for six sets of six no suit, wraps, belt, no nothingI was content with 405. We were dying after the first set.
The heat was particularly vicious: 100-dgrees with zero circulation. I even turned on the air conditioning which consisted of opening the garage door. No help today. Later Deluxe called this session, the hardest single workout of my life. Nice compliment. Afterwards, as was our habit, we walked directly to the deck, sat down and drank protein/carb powder shakes. I fired up the propane grill. Actually I had fired it up when we were still squatting so when we walked to the deck we were ready to roll. The rib eye steaks were local cattle sold to us by religious fundamentalist at their butcher shop. I marinate them for 24-hours in a secret sauce and leave them out on the counter an hour before grilling to let the fat soften. Throw these on the red hot grill grate. Sear on both sides, turn the heat way down and shut the grill cover. Let the steaks bake for three to five minutes. Internal temp: 140-degrees use a meat thermometer! Perfect every time. Chuck and I would be eating steaks (plural) within ten minutes of training. Mar-tee my man, Hed drawl thicker than Fog Horn Leg Horn (incongruous for a guy with a law degree and a journalism degree) This is bout what Id imagine Heaven be like for a powerlifter assuming you believe in that sort of thing. Jed Clampett-inspired proverbial wisdompure bunkhouse logic.
That boy could eat: Id buy him ten dollars worth, 2.5 pounds of pure Black Angus hed gobble that down like a snack hed be eyeing mine. Are you going to finish that? After that nap time! Steak was $4.00 a pound and this was top-shelf beef, restaurant grade. Now rib eye is $10 a pound with filets topping out at 14-bucks a pound. Steak is off my regular rotation and now reserved for special events.
.I happened to see the Ali-Forman When We Were Kings movie again. Loved Mailer and Plimptons retelling, particularly Mailer morphing into southern storytellerHunter Thompson reportedly was in attendance but so bombed out of his mind he forgot what day it was and missed the fight. On a related note: Thompsons wife seems to be backpedaling on her assertion that she was going to abide by his wishes and shoot his ashes 1000-feet into the air in a skyrocket that would explode in eight separate stages. The idea was to build a 50-foot tower complete with double-thumbed gonzo fist then shoot the rocket off from behind the prop. Below, friends would revel in fittingly hedonistic fashion though, in view of Thompsons age and the age of his friends, it would be a gathering of Tired Hedonists. What is a tired hedonist? I thought you would never ask: Cyril is addressing Vivian in Oscar Wildes The Decay of Lying. (In my minds eye I always think of Samuel L. Jackson addressing Camille Paglia) We pick up the action,
CYRIL: Give me a cigarette. Thanks. By the way, what magazine do you intend to publish your article, The Decay of Lying: A Protest.
VIVIAN: For The Retrospective Review; I think I told you the elect had revived it.
CYRIL: Whom do you mean by the elect?
VIVIAN: Oh, The Tired Hedonists, of course. It is a club to which I belong. Im afraid you are not eligible. You are too fond of simple pleasures.
CYRIL: Well, I should fancy you are all a good deal bored with each other.
VIVIAN: We are. That is one of the objects of the club. Now if you promise not to interrupt too often I will read you my article.
I think the party ethic exemplified by Hunter would naturally result in a tired hedonist at some point in time. I suspect he too became tired, recognized it and checked out when physical disability affected mobility. Master actor George Sands suicide note was haiku-like, God Im so bored On to cheerier subjects
The movie is about the epic battle between Ali and George. (I love George he and I are exactly the same age) The video jarred my memory about a quote sport writer Peter Whitmer attributed to Ali in an interview after the Rumble in the Jungle.
In the 5th round during the rope-a-dope when Ali was purposefully allowing Foreman to punch himself out, to hide from the firestorm Ali recounted,
I went into the Near Room. The door was only half open. Inside, the room was neon orange with green blinking lights. There were bats blowing trumpets and alligators playing trombones. I could hear the screaming of snakes. On the walls were weird masks and actors clothes.
Ali said he would duck into the Near Room anytime he was in the ring in a fight and in trouble. To go inside the Near Room was to commit to self destruction.
An interesting psychological insight into how one of the great athletes of our century dealt with the immediacy of severe athletic adversity. He would attempt to ride the firestorm out and if still standing after the onslaught would be refreshed and revived enough to counterattack. He had far, far more strategic successes than failures.
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