Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, January 23, 1995                   TAG: 9501250023
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

VODKA'S GOT THE ONLY WORTHWHILE STING

This seems to me to be as helpful as keeping a diary of your root canal or serious abdominal surgery.

I don't see how emphasizing the pain in this way would encourage us to keep inflicting such agony and boredom on our bodies. I suspect that when many of us read our journals, we'd know we were losing the game and pig out on fast food to ease the frustration.

I think a typical, and honest, exercise journal might read like the following:

"Monday - It's 7 a.m. and the basement has leaked overnight because the gutters clogged up as usual, and I'm killing myself on the old rowing machine. You probably think it's funny as hell to be using a rowing machine in a flooded basement, but I don't exactly get the joke, pal.

"It's no fun to be working like a galley slave at this time of the morning. I think, though, that if somebody was beating a drum and lashing me with a whip, it would take my mind off the way this machine hurts my entire body.

"Tuesday - The water has gone down, and I'm now doing my sit-ups on the weight bench I bought in 1983 for therapy after knee surgery. These sit-ups primarily take away my will to live while doing nothing to take away the lard around my waist.

"I should have set this weight bench on fire years ago, except I don't know how you burn one of the loathsome things.

"It's a funny thing, but I always think of Charlton Heston when I'm doing my sit-ups. I think this may be caused by the fact that these sit-ups are rather like Old Testament punishment. I think I would rather be stoned in the town square than do push-ups. At least they usually don't stone you every morning.

"Wednesday - I wish you could be here to listen to the gruesome sounds my upper arms make when I work out with the old dumb bells. The left shoulder, for example, goes "gerssssggggcht," and then it makes a sickening clicking sound.

"I'm getting a little muscle on my arms, but I don't care that much about my arms. I care about the rest of me.

"What I'm supposed to be doing with this journal is to tell myself that every day in every way I'm getting better and better.

"You can buy that one if you want to, Chester. I'm tired of hurting like this. Join me in a little vodka stinger?"