Hooray for Rainman!

**Editor's note: I'm at work. I apologize in advance if certain parts of this post don't make sense.**

My schedule requires me to work Wednesday evenings until 8pm. Ideally, since I don't start work until 11am, I should get out of bed in the morning and go to the gym before work. That hasn't happened once yet. I'm hoping that once we get settled in at the house and the gym is a mere 2 miles away, I'll have more motivation to get there in the morning. For now, I hope that the rest day falls on a Wednesday, and when it doesn't, I trudge to the gym after work.

There are two times a day that a gym is busy: before work (6-8am) and after work (5-7pm). Outside those times, you typically find people like myself who work odd shifts, don't like people, and... various others who can be quite strange.

Perhaps it's not kind of me to refer to these people as strange. But that's how I see them as I weave through them, trying to get to my equipment while still on the clock. There are old men who stare at you as you run, interrupting your concentration and causing general paranoia. There are women who do seemingly nothing but walk and giggle with one another. Tony has mentioned more than once that most people are too far below average intelligence to navigate the track successfully without getting in the way of others.

But none of these people compares to Rainman. I use the name Rainman because most people can immediately identify with the movie and picture a semi-retarded man in his late forties. Since I don't know of any famous characters that meet the description of the man at my gym, allow me to tweak that character in your mind. This Rainman can't walk, so he zips around the upper level of the gym on his shiny maroon wheelchair, head always rolled to one side or another, staring at seemingly nothing as he maneuvers fitness equipment. I've never felt comfortable enough to get a good look at his clothes, and for the most part, he doesn't stay in one area for long anyway. He always has a passive look on his face--slack jawed, if you will-- until he gets a weight in his hand. Then the real magic begins.

Rainman only knows how to do curls and to lift the weight above his head. Each rep is accompanied by a shout of which number he has completed. However, his counting skills are lacking, so he is sometimes very quickly able to make it to 50 when he has completed closer to 12. Nonetheless, he is very excited about his accomplishments, finishing each set with a loudly proclaimed, "Hooray!" At least, I think he's saying "hooray," it can be difficult to tell.

Rainman has never bothered me before. He's usually leaving when I'm coming in, so I've ignored him up until now. Wednesday night, however, he was gliding back and forth, between the benches, and stopping where ever his little heart desired. A few people were working out on the mat in front of the giant mirror, so I began doing squats between the benches. I had hardly gotten to five before Rainman was at my side, ramming his chair into my legs. I wasn't sure if he was trying to get past me, or if he was doing it for his own amusement, but I ignored him and continued to do my set. He didn't get the hint, and sat there, staring at me until I moved. Angrily, I picked up my towel and stomped off into the other room, leaving him to find someone else to ram into.

When I came back to use the pull-up machine, Rainman was still there, but this time he had a weight in his hand and was calling out numbers.

"Five! Six! Nine! Fourteen! Nineteen!" He stops abruptly and throws the weight on the floor. Somehow another weight materializes and he resumes, "Twenty-five!"

I try to block out the noise, which I can hear over my headphones as I count out my own pull-ups, dips and sit-ups. He's driving me crazy. "Fifty! Hooray!"

Yes, hooray for you, now will you go home or where ever it is that you belong?

***

It wasn't until later that I felt bad about being angry with Rainman. It wasn't his fault he was obscenely annoying. Besides, he was probably working harder than most of the fat old ladies, and enjoying it more too. Even later, I wondered if nicknaming him Rainman was a cruel thing to do. I decided it wasn't, as I needed a name to identify him with for this story, and actually, Rainman in the movie (and in real life) was actually a very intelligent guy. Who knows, YMCA Rainman could be crunching numbers in his free time too... although I doubt it.

That night, I managed to get in 8 rounds of 5 pull-ups, 5 dips and 10 sit-ups before I thought my arms would fall off (just over 10 minutes). That's a total of 40 pull ups at a 22# assisted weight. Not bad.

Tony has criticized me for doing additional cardio on the days that I'm already doing a WOD. Crossfit does say that cardio is for idiots, but I can't help but feel like this isn't working fast enough. I haven't noticed my pants getting any more loose lately. I'm going to try it his way for a few weeks though, and only run on the days that I have an easy WOD (ha!) or a day off. We'll see how it goes.