One Month at a Time: Even if the glove fits -- you shouldn't always wear it

Caroline smiled. I hadn’t flinched.

Caroline likes to give me a certain amount of grief, most of which I’ve earned. I’ve been known to cut corners. I can be sloppy with my form, and I can come off as cocky.

It makes me an easy target, but she prefers if I fight back a little.

“What’s with the gloves?� she asked. “We don’t wear gloves in here.�

I rolled my eyes and said, “I’ve got the Spartan races in a couple of weeks. I did the one six years ago. The two things where I really went wrong were with my hands and my scalp.�

I’d suffered a vicious sunburn on the course. Under the August sun, I’d broiled and turned the color of farm-raised salmon. A week later, I began to peel and shed the dead skin like an iguana.

For the upcoming races, I planned to wear a hat and coat myself in the heaviest, most long-lasting sunblock I could find.

My hands were a harder fix.

The obstacles at the Spartan Race had included a lot of climbing and crawling. There were nets, ropes and an assortment of metal bars. By the time I crossed the finish line for the 13-mile race, my palms felt like I’d been petting a cheese grater. My hands ached. Gripping the steering wheel on the drive back to ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä hurt.

It took days to heal, and that was all from one race. This time, I'm looking at three. How am I supposed to do that without the use of my hands?

I tried to explain this, but Caroline shook her head and said, “You need man hands.�

I opened my palms and showed off the requisite, yellow callouses. I have hands like a gorilla, but I don't think that's going to matter.

Caroline was unmoved. CrossFit is supposed to make you tougher. She was telling me to get tougher, but I kept on my gloves and got ready for the day’s workout.

Training for these Spartan Races in a couple of weeks has sort of been going on for months. At least, I’ve kept up with a regular schedule of CrossFit classes and running. I generally get to CrossFit WV four times a week and go for a run at least as often.

Some days, I do both. And occasionally, I do a little more, like add pushups or pullups at the end of a class or just cut my grass.

I use a push mower and live on the side of a hill. On average, it takes four hours to get the job done, and I feel like that counts as some kind of exercise.

But with the actual weekend of the trifecta coming up, I pushed a little harder. My weekend and mid-week miles crept up. Once I started running more than five or six miles, I began wearing the water pack.

I probably didn’t actually need to, but since I'm going to wear it during the 13-mile Beast race on Sept. 7, I thought I should get used to it.

I wasn’t sure how far I could actually run.

Following last year’s surgery and slow recovery, I don’t think I ever did more than five miles. I just never bothered to go farther. Once the surgeon released me from most restrictions, I just put more time in at the gym.

I enjoy running. Long-distance running helps me clear my head. It’s good for relieving stress and easing my blood pressure, but CrossFit makes me feel stronger. The gym is social and a (mostly) healthy competitiveness is encouraged.

And I probably overtrained for the Spartan Beast the first time around. I followed a half-marathon plan and, sure enough, weeks before the actual race, I could run 13 miles in about two hours.

I never said I was fast.

But it was more running than I actually needed.

Because of the obstacles and the number of people on the course, the race frequently bottle-necked. You could really only run for a half a mile or so before you encountered a wall, a set of bars or rope that needed to be climbed over or crawled under.

The Spartan Beast tested me over and over, but it wasn’t really a long-distance run. It was an endurance race. You just needed to be able to stay on your feet and keep your wits, not cover a lot of ground in a hurry.

So, as I’ve been training over the summer, I’ve kept my weekend mile gains modest -- no big jumps. One Sunday, I ran six miles. The next week, I ran four. The following weekend, I ran another six and then seven.

Now, I’m up to eight. I might get to nine or ten before the Spartan weekend, but I might not.

This time around, I’ve worried less about all of the running and thought more about the wear and tear.

The gloves were part of this.

As Caroline counted down the clock for the workout of the day to start, I flexed my hands inside the gloves. They felt good. I felt good, and this was a workout I could do, just a sequence of movements completed in three-minute rounds over a half hour.

First, you strap into a rowing machine and row 150 meters. This is followed by seven pullups and then a heavy barbell lift.

Most of us could do this in less than two minutes. With the remaining time, you can rest, adjust the weight on the barbell or check Facebook, if you really want. Lots of people in the class do sit-ups. I do pushups.

The coach shouted for us to begin. I rowed as hard as I could, got off the rower in less than a minute and jumped off and went to a pullup bar.

Me, the guy who could barely do one pullup for the annual Presidential Physical Fitness program when he was a kid, cranked out seven pullups without any trouble, but my hands slid inside the synthetic leather gloves.

I got through the first round and tried again. It was worse.

I peeled off the gloves and tossed them to the side before the start of the third round.

After the workout was over, I told Caroline that I’d ditched the gloves. They just weren’t going to work.

“What should I do?�

She shrugged. She’d already told me.

“Man hands.�