New 2008 Summer Olympics Event: Extreme Gardening

I never hurt this badly when I was training for triathlons. Even now I do workouts to videos by those fitness Nazis Cathe Friedrich and David Kirsch; and yes, my heart rate ascends and I curse them as I perform their punishing machinations and contortions like some trained seal. Sometimes I’ll even follow one of those Bataan death workouts with a 5-mile run, which can be a lot of damned work. Once I’m finished, I stretch, the endorphins spin around my blood stream, and we’re all good. Ahhhhh….

Not so gardening. I’m amazed that they haven’t made an advanced workout video that includes shoveling mulch, hoisting peat moss bales, wrestling uncooperative gas-powered equipment, and performing endless squats while weeding. Unlike the results of tortuous traditional workouts, I did not spring out of bed this morning ready to do it again. Due to the hours of yesterday’s yard work, I whimpered as I gingerly edged off the mattress, crab-walked into the bathroom, sucked down four Ibuprofen, then crawled back into the sack until I absolutely had to get ready for work.

The implements of this seemingly benign pastime are enough to prepare for guerilla warfare: shovels, pitchforks (Satan’s favorite—and now I have some feel for the association), axes, pickaxes, and all manner of tools with long and twisted prongs that look like they could be used to gut the enemy. I always thought gardening was for the meek and the grandma who had no strength left for anything else. Now I’m discovering that these gardeners are undercover Hercules and Xena Warrior Princesses who may be raising their own armies. Or at least indulging in the masochism of training for extreme sports. Stay tuned for Beijing 2008.