Endorphins

Where are the endorphins, I say, where?  Isn't that one of the reasons why people do all kinds of crazy exercise, for the awesome endorphin rush?  The runner's high or whatever.

Although my legs were screaming at me, I went to damned crossfit again this morning.  I read on the internet that a little light exercise was good for getting the acid out of your muscles when they are sore so I though a nice WOD would help.

A WOD is the Workout Of the Day.  It could also be called the HHWAGTTTKYT.  Here's How We Are Going To Try To Kill You Today.

You do your WOD in a BOX.  Just let that roll around for a little bit.  There are all kinds of innuendo possible in the Crossfit world.  I watched a competition today and saw a person with a MASTER The SNATCH t-shirt on.

In any case, I completed the WOD but didn't get as many repetitions done as I would like.  Before we began the coach said not to really worry about the number of reps you were getting done, but to gauge your performance off the people on your side.  I was in the middle of  two guys with a total body fat percentage of 4, between them. They both had abs up to beyond their nipples.  I decided I would not be using either of them to gauge my performance.

It was pretty horrible and involved throwing a weighted ball up a wall and jumping rope and running.  Over and over and over.  The hell am I doing?  Seriously.

When we were done, one of the two guys kinda pushed his abs down off his face so he could talk to me.  I do have to say that, so far, CrossFit people seem to be very supportive and I don't get a lot of sense of being judged at all.  Anyway, he asked me what I thought and I told him I thought it was horrible and I hated it.

He laughed, because I am hilarious, then he said, "Yeah.  That's the way it is.  It's horrible when you start, but then you get used to it, and then, later, you love it and can't live without it."

Interestingly, after having smoked the half-cigarette that encompasses ALL of the cigarette I ever smoked because it was horrible, I had almost the exact same thing said to me by a kid I knew who had been smoking for some time.  I say almost, but really, the words could have actually been EXACTLY the same said in almost the EXACT same way.

When I was driving home it occurred to me that I felt like warmed-over garbage.  And not garbage warmed over by someone caring who was aware they were warming garbage and tried to do their very best with it, like slowly simmering in olive oil with some garlic.  NO. Not like that.  Like someone popped a plate of swill in the microwave for 10 seconds then threw it at me.  More like that.

Hmm.  This was supposed to be a short post but I just used a word that made me think of something.  Swill. Do you know what swill is? It's a real thing.  I think it's still kind of used from time to time to just refer to bad food, but do you know what it REALLY is?

Get this.  Growing up in the 70s in Fall River, when we would eat at my Grandmother Radcliffe's house, after the meal she would send me out to the swill bucket.  She would pile all the scraps from the plates, not leftovers, the food you would throw away, and I would take it out to the swill bucket.

The swill bucket was buried in the yard in like a cement cylinder. It had a heavy metal top on it with a lever you would press on with your foot exposing the old congealed swill.

This wasn't something they just cooked up.  This was an official thing, like from the city or whatever.

There was a SWILL MAN!  The SWILL MAN would come around in a special truck, like the garbage men and COLLECT THE SWILL!!  GAH!

They must have stopped this swill collecting at some point.  Can't still be going on.  Imagine how relieved you would be if you were the swill man and someone told you you had become redundant.

Bleagh.  Wish I hadn't thought of that.  You can Google swill bucket if you want.  I wouldn't, but you could.

Um... I have yet to experience endorphins from CrossFit, was my point.