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.
WildSnow.com publisher emeritus and founder Lou (Louis Dawson) has a 50+ years career in climbing, backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. He was the first person in history to ski down all 54 Colorado 14,000-foot peaks, has authored numerous books about about backcountry skiing, and has skied from the summit of Denali in Alaska, North America’s highest mountain.