Solo, off the juice, Clark

Ali pulled out for Orlando to meet up with her family on Saturday.  She took the party van and headed up I-75.  I talked to her a few times along the way.  She said the drive was scary because the strong winds were buffeting the van back and forth.  She made it to the timeshare intact. 

On Saturday I knocked out the majority of my housework and then glued myself to the PC playing WoW of course.  On Sunday morning I had the idea to take Nicki to the dog park.  She hadn’t been there in a couple years.  When we took her there before she would just cower in fear and hide between my legs when approached by other dogs.  My mom had the day off so I asked her to come along.  Well it was pretty much the same deal.  These big, huge dogs came up and Nicki hid.  She wasn’t quite as timid as before but she’ll never be a social butterfly dog.  As I was watching the other dogs wrestle and play I wished Nicki would give it a try instead of only wrestling with me. 

I decided to get off the creatine once again.  For two years, including almost a year of running, my knees had been solid, only offering minimal problems now and then.  Well since I started on creatine again my knees once again have been painful.  The latest episode after running on Thursday was serious.  My bad knee has been sore ever since. After hearing Ali remind me that I had the exact same shit happening after I took it last time and me reading on the internet about others that had joint pain after supplementing with creatine, I decided to pull the plug.  In a weird way I could almost identify with someone like Barry Bonds.  Taking creatine makes me stronger and going to the gym each week and being able to do more than the week before is almost an intoxicating thing.  It motivates you, it makes you want to do more.  So my plan as of now is to be clean and see if my knee gets better.  If it does I will either try Kre-Alkalyn or Endothil CR and see how those products work with my body chemistry.

Speaking of my increased strength, I had yet another odd gym moment on Friday.  Friday is the day I try for one rep max on the bench.  Shortly after putting up 270, as I was sitting on the bench, an older guy came up to me, maybe in his 50’s.  I saw him a couple days prior and immediately pegged him as gay and I had the feeling he was “observing” me.  Anyway, he comes up to me and says, “Is your name Clark?”  I immediately sensed what he was implying but I just gave him a look.  He continued, “You know, Clark, like Clark Kent”  I said “as in Superman?” “Yes!” he says and then goes into some story about his son also being tall and strong. Evidently he was impressed by the iron I had just pushed off my chest.  He asked me how tall I was, he guessed I was 6’8″, I gave him my actual height as 4 inches shorter than that. It was very awkward and I just tried to exit the conversation as quickly as possible. Although I have to admit, the comment further solidified my desire to keep supplementing. Even though I weigh almost 200 pounds now, I still look pretty “skinny” so to some, it looks impressive to see this skinny guy lift some decent weight.