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Marolt: A different kind of fun

Roger Marolt

I just finished a CrossFit session. It’s the hardest workout I’ve ever done. I’m dead. Tomorrow morning is going to be hell! The day after will be even worse. I’ll be so stiff I won’t be able to tie my own shoes.

Sounds awesome, but I like the TRX core workout. It looks easy but it’s not. I almost cried the first time I did it. My abs were so tender it hurt to laugh.

I like to bar hop — Pure Barre and CycleBar. t’s a killer combo. I don’t think there’s a more extreme workout routine.



Oh, really? Have you ever tried power lifting? I’ve been doing that for about six months now. It’s super intense. I did a few sets of max-weight squats and dead lifts the other day. I was so sore the next day I couldn’t sit on the toilet. It takes everything I have to get psyched up to do it, but man it works the whole body. It’s incredibly difficult.

That all sounds great, but I don’t like gyms. I like to get out in the sunshine and fresh air on my road bike. I alternate days either going to the Maroon Bells or Ashcroft then once a week or so heading up to the top of Independence Pass.




That doesn’t sound too tough.

Well, I like to time myself to make sure I’m pushing hard. I try to get to the top in less than two hours. It fries my legs. I’m practically foaming at the mouth I’m breathing so hard. It’s two hours of pure torture. The next day I can hardly get downstairs to breakfast. I’m, like, hanging onto the railing so I my legs don’t give out.

Yeah, I like to get outside, too, but I don’t have all day to get my burn in. I like to do some short, intense hikes.

Like Smuggler?

Yeah, sometimes. I do intervals up that one. The one I really like is the Ute Trail. It’s super steep and, if you go full tilt to the top where the cliffs are, you almost wish you were dead you hurt so bad. Sometimes I breathe so hard I can taste blood.

Really? I used to do that too, except I now carry a backpack loaded with a 25-pound weight I borrow from the health club. I go there first and run backward on the treadmill for 15 minutes to warm up before heading up the Ute. It’s nice to engage a different set of muscles than I use going up the trail. The next morning I can hardly get out of bed. All the muscles in my legs ache, not just the thighs, so I know it works.

I’m kind of into my SHIIT workout.

What?!

Super High Intensity Interval Training. You have to try it! It is so hard that I get nervous before I do it. It absolutely destroys you. You go as hard as you possibly can on the stationary bicycle and then you rest for a minute and a half before going full-throttle again. You repeat this eight times. The good news is that the whole workout only takes 20 minutes. The bad news is that those 20 minutes are horrific. They say most people do it once and never go back to it. I hallucinated the last time I did it.

Oh, yeah. I do that workout, except I do it outside on the track. It makes it so much harder because it’s based on covering 200 meters per interval instead of just going hard for 30 seconds. If you slack off a little, you have to make it up by sprinting for a longer time. There is no cheating on this. I throw up every time I do it!

It took six months to recover from the stress fractures I got in my ultra marathon!

I nearly got eaten by a shark while muscling through the early stages of hypothermia when I swam The Chanel!

I don’t think I will ever again have feeling in my private parts after riding my bicycle from Nome, Alaska, to Cape Horn last year without any rest days, but that will probably make the next time more comfortable.

I like to do yoga.

What? Oh, yeah, you mean the kind you do in a steaming hot room over a bed of burning embers!

No, just the regular kind.

What? Are you kidding? Why do you waste your time on that?

It feels good.

Roger Marolt doesn’t know if you can consider it getting smarter if you ease up only after half your body parts don’t work anymore. Email at roger@maroltllp.com.