So it seems Blog Further has developed a crush on another blog.  Its name is Male Pattern Fitness.

Of course, blogs develop crushes on other blogs all the time; it’s kinda what makes the blogosphere go round.  But Blog Further has a particular kind of crush on Male Pattern Fitness— a sub-category that, for lack of a better term, could best be described as a fitness crush.  More likely than not, you have had a fitness crush— that complex of giddiness, admiration, fantasy and identification experienced in the presence of someone whose physique, athletic ability, or just plain determination takes your breath away.  Far from rivalry and ressentiment, a fitness crush is marked by gratitude, tenderness, and a certain weakening of the knees.  I would hazard many of us developed an Olympic-size fitness crush on Michael Phelps this past summer.  And, of course, a fitness crush can include an entire team, explaining why so many of us feel crushed when our crushes get crushed on the playing field.

Now, the roots of Blog Further’s crush date back to college when its editor— me!— first met Male Pattern Fitness’s author, Andrew Heffernan.  I first saw Andrew in a freshman production of Working and was immediately smitten by his on-stage charisma and Marlon Brando good looks.  Andrew had one of those Olympian physiques that every guy envies.  In addition, he was a damn good writer, as formidable on the page as he was on stage.   Andrew and I took many acting classes together (when he courted Lady Kate as the Henry V, the entire class swooned) and we competed not a few times for the same roles.  We even found ourselves pitted against each other in our stage combat class— me playing a homely David to his beautiful Goliath.  Everything about our situation should have provoked competition and a certain degree of distance between us— but the only thing that did develop, at least for me, was a fitness crush.   More gentle giant than Goliath, Andrew had a way of making me feel safe (well, except for when he was bearing down on me with a rapier and dagger) as well as making me laugh.

So, imagine my delight when my college fitness crush blogged about me— ME!— on Male Pattern Fitness.  I was like:

OMG! My fitness crush knows I exist.

He even addressed me by surname, beginning sentences with such deferential nods as “Durgin tells us…”   It was like swimming the two hundred meters and having Micheal Phelps who, unbeknownst to you, has been trailing in the next lane, come up after the race and say, “Nice stroke. I had trouble keeping up.”  Who wouldn’t blush?

When not blogging about fitness, training for a triathlon, or starring in Hamlet (agents and casting directors take note),  Andrew can be found running his own personal training company Dynamic Fitness.  Think of him as the brunette, West Coast version of our own crush-inducing Jamie Dreyer.  We totally think our Angelean readers should check him out.

Now Blog Further can’t help but gush all about its fitness crush, wanting our readers to subscribe and swoon over Male Pattern Fitness as much as we do.   I mean, how can you not love a blog with posts like “Remembrance of Twinks Past”?

Blog Further lets out a collective sigh.

Allen Durgin is the editor of Blog Further and prone to many a fitness crush.

So I have to go to Chicago. I’m actually kind of happy about this because I’ve never been to Chicago and most importantly someone else is paying.  As business trips go this one is pretty short, out on Saturday back on Monday, no big deal.  Because I’ll be meeting the Chairman of the Board (no, not Sinatra) and because I like to make a good impression overall, I thought I’d do something crazy and get some new pants.  In retrospect, I guess I should have set out on an easier mission, like finding a piece of the true cross.  I began my quest at The Grove.  For those not familiar (and why would you be?), The Grove is a big outdoor shopping mall with all the same stores as an indoor shopping mall but laid out in a way to give people the impression that they’re shopping on Rodeo Drive instead of at a big outdoor shopping mall.  I went to some of the trendier stores but as a rule they’re too expensive and I’m now a hair too old for what they sell.  As has happened many times in the past I ended up at one of the mall’s big chain stores.  I don’t want to give any plugs so let’s just call it “Plantain Federation.”

The Plantain Federation at The Grove is one of the nicest Plantain Federations you’re ever likely to see.  It really is beautiful; more Milanese palazzo than retail chain store, it covers two floors and contains more white marble that Arlington National Cemetery.  The men’s section is on the second floor and I climb the wrought iron staircase in pursuit of my grey or black, light wool quarry.  I am truly impressed by what I see.  Pants, shirts, ties, jackets— a menswear store worthy of the finest European grand magasin.  I begin my search at a wall of racks all holding just what I’m looking for.  I work my through each rack from front to back— size 28, 30, 32, 34, 35 (35?), 36, 36, 36.  No 38.  No 38?  Well they must be somewhere else, on a table maybe.  I find a table and it’s the same thing all over again.  After 10 minutes of excavation EUREKA, pair of 38s. They’re not exactly what I’m looking for but at this point I’ll take ‘em.  I’ve been a size 38 for most of the last 10 years but I try them on just to be safe.  Now I don’t know in what parallel universe these pants were made or what creature they were made for but I do know this much.  The parallel universe does not have carbohydrates and the (supposedly male) creatures for which they were made do not have external reproductive organs.  These bad boys are tight.  So I peel out of them and check the label to make sure it matches the tag.  Sometimes pants get tagged incorrectly but this time no such luck.  Knowing that I couldn’t fit into these pants and knowing that there was no way I was going to find a size 40 left me feeling defeated and a little depressed.  Have I gained that much weight?  There was only one thing to do.  That’s right, go to dinner.

Many have said it and it does bear repeating:

Korean BBQ doesn’t fix everything.

So in a last ditch effort to find myself some new duds without making a trip to the big and tall men’s store I fell into one last chain store.  A store that I felt I’d outgrown and that was, to be frank, a little beneath me.  And there, lo and behold, were a size 38 pants just as nice as the groin crushing ones from the night before in several styles and colors and even more miraculous they fit.  I have no doubt that after a little work at the gym (the gym I’ve yet to join), I’ll be able to walk into  Plantain Federation with my head held high, pick out whatever catches my eye and have it fit.  Until that time it’s nice to know I’ve found a store to fill the GAP.

Bob Speck lives and writes in Los Angeles.  He has no idea why.

Since my first posting about inspirational verbal cues a few weeks ago, I’ve heard from many folks who use words to fuel their workouts.  Below are some of the standouts.

1.  One reader takes inspiration from Oregon track star Steve Prefontaine’s famous statement:

Most people run a race to see who is fastest; I run to see who has the most guts.

Take it from one who’s been passed during races by 65-year-old men and rotund midwest matrons— guts are the great equalizer.

2.  Another (possibly psychopathic) runner suggested his favorite:

Murder death kill.

Apparently this phrase is taken from a futuristic 1993 film called Demolition Man starring Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes.  To use it to maximum effect, according to my deranged friend, you must repeatedly shout this phrase during the most excruciating parts of your workout/run.  I can’t say that I ever see myself endorsing (or even trying) this one.

3.  Whatever your personal feelings about the Bible, it seems to be chock full of inspirational mantras.  Here are a couple of those readers find compelling:

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.   —Hebrews 12:1

Those who wait on the Lord . . . shall run and not grow tired.  —Isaiah 40:31

When you walk, your step will not be hampered; and if you run, you will not stumble.  —Proverbs 4:12

Although it’s not precisely a mantra, one final useful marathon strategy that sometimes works is to run each of those last grueling miles from 20-26.2 for a particular person in your life— wife, husband, parent, boyfriend, child, friend, etc.— drawing strength from the thought of her/him to pull you through to a respectable finish.  This can be beneficial in unforeseen ways; when my husband was slowing down during mile 24 of the Blue Angels marathon in Pensacola and I exhorted him,

Think of your MOTHER!!

His response that he couldn’t provided me with a nice little bit of blackmail material. (Don’t worry— my mother-in-law doesn’t use the internet).

Jeanine Casler lives, runs, and writes in Evanston, Illinois.

Dante begins The Inferno by stating,

Halfway along this journey of our life,

I woke in wonder in a sunless wood,

For I had wandered from the narrow way.

Our eponymous, middle-aged narrator has lost his path in life, metaphorically and literally.  To return, he must travel through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.

By Dante’s reckoning, I’m middle aged, though our culture would assure me that I have a few years left before I wake in a sunless wood, struggle to find the path again, and purchase an expensive red car that can take me from zero to traffic ticket in five seconds.  Yet, I’ve been thinking about how I’m aging and how I want to age.

Supposedly, I should grow older with regret.  If I believe most of the magazine covers, I should mourn my changing body, looking back at my path with anguish, measuring myself against either others or the person I used to be.  Scan the racks of periodicals in the local bookstore; most of the health magazines aimed at men advertise how to get the body of a twenty-two year old model.  Don’t have those sculpted abs?  You’ve definitely lost the way.

But, magazines not withstanding, don’t you feel sorry for the professional athletes?  They have a path too clearly set before them.  Consider Lance Armstrong on a bike, Michael Phelps in the swimming lane, Serena Williams on the court.  Winners all.  But what happens when the path no longer leads to winning times or powerful strokes?  The paths that they followed, so clearly marked, so well measured with golds and accolades and statistics— they end.

I’m lucky; I’ve won few races against either opponents or time.  As a result, my mediocrity as an athlete guarantees that I will never have to leave my meandering trail.  So I don’t mind much anymore that people half my age are faster and stronger.  Because I have continued to run and bike, even when better athletes than I have grown pudgy, have succumbed to the couch, have numbed their minds with too many episodes of Gilmore Girls or Scrubs, have started to live behind themselves, in their past glories.  I plan to win not through talent, but through stubbornness.  I always did prefer distance races over sprints, anyway.

Eventually, we will all lose.  But before then, I’ll keep running and biking and kayaking.  And if I happen to get lost in the woods, that’s okay, because part of the fun of exercise is making the path as you go.

Robin Follet lives, teaches, and cartoons in North Carolina.

Being an Eagle Scout, I am no stranger to the great outdoors.  But having lived the past nine years in the concrete jungle of NYC with no car, Mother Nature and I have been distant old friends for way too long now.

After a ten-year hiatus I went camping this weekend at Bear Mountain, bringing my girlfriend Maribel along with me for her first wilderness overnighter.  I don’t mean fake camping, where you drive 100 ft past the latrine up to your spot, drop a tent next to the car and watch the game with your buddies on a mini-TV.  That to me is just cheap accommodations.  By camping I mean backpacking. Leave the car in the lot, hike several miles into the mountains, pitch a tent and poop in the woods.  You should be far enough away from people that no one can hear your screams. Otherwise the scary stories don’t have the same effect.

I knew the trail I wanted to hike, the location I wanted to stay at each night, the food I wanted to prepare and the story I wanted to tell.  Other than that, what we did the rest of the time was a great, big, question mark.

So, why did I leave a cozy home, Siggy’s Good Food and indoor plumbing behind to carry 40lbs. of gear up a mountain, sit in the woods for three days and freeze my butt off for two nights?  And why did I feel compelled to drag my girlfriend along with me (other than the fact that it was her car getting me to the mountain)? Was it for the exercise?  Nah.  Was it to look macho in front of my woman?  Couldn’t hurt, but no.

It was to reconnect. Reconnect with my body as I navigated over the terrain. Reconnect with nature as it engulfed me.  And reconnect with Maribel as the distractions our everyday lives became more distant. This last point ended up being the most important part of the weekend.

The past two months have been rough ones for me.  Life has whipped a few curve balls my way and one caught me in the head, leaving me feeling deflated and defeated.  In the past, I would not have shared such troubles with anyone.  Instead I’d put up a façade and avoided intimacy with friends and lovers until I felt I had put myself back together.  But my silence during the first day’s hike weighed on each of us more than any of the gear we were carrying. We needed to talk.

Thankfully, Maribel has always put me at ease in regards to sharing subjects that previously were very loaded for me.  So I took a risk and exposed my insecurities to her as well as my fears of sharing such in the first place.  In doing so I learned two big lessons.  It is OK to share these feelings with close friends and family. But most importantly, they would probably love the opportunity to be there for me.

Now sitting at home, it is obvious that my aching legs had a great workout.  But I can’t help but be convinced that the healthiest part of this weekend was learning that what I saw as an emotional burden that I did not want to place on others could actually be an opportunity to let others get closer to me. In fact, learning that lesson was probably the healthiest thing I’ve done all year.

Jamie Dreyer is the President of Further Fitness.