Training Log: Push Ups

I am a spaghetti-armed, pencil-necked geek, genetically hardwired to store everything on my stomach and thighs, but nothing on my arms. They're like alien arms. They do nothing but hang there weakly. When I think about Kilimanjaro, I look at my arms disdainfully.

This won't work. I want strong arms so that I can drag my sorry hide up the mountain by my poles when my legs fail. I need muscular shoulders so that I can carry my pack with my head held high. I dream of having forearms cast from iron, so that I can walk up Kilimanjaro on my hands or swing through the rainforest portion of the hike like a monkey in the trees.

I want to make it look easy, which is the most precise explanation for why I'm virtually guaranteed to be the one who spends the whole trek barfing from altitude sickness. I know pride is one of the seven deadly sins, but that's no reason to not train.

Last night, I did push-ups.

Seventy-five of them, which might seem to be no big deal to you, if you weren't born with spaghetti arms. To me, it was seventy-five quivering descents into the bowels of hell.

And then I had a moment of clarity: I don't really want to walk up the mountain on my hands. I'd rather use my legs. On the agenda for tonight: Stairmastering my quads into oblivion and deciding to slither up Kilimanjaro on my belly.