Woodland Warriors

I openly admit to being that rarest of Bostonians in that I put the Red Sox in fourth place of the local sports hierarchy. It is not that I root against them, it is just if given the option I would rather watch the Celtics, Patriots or Bruins more. Considering I would also rather watch golf than baseball I think this has less to do with the Red Sox and more to do with the fact I am just not a big fan of baseball (if the Red Sox are not involved they could cancel the World Series I would barely notice). Anyway, it is because I am willing to admit this rather than act like I was right there living and dying with every pitch of the Red Sox World Series run that I had no intention of ever going to the "Rolling Rally" Victory Parade which was held over the weekend. As a serious sports fan there is nothing I dislike more than a person who couldn't name half the rotation in July but are now elbowing their way in front of a TV camera to tell the world how they stood by this team through thick and thin. I know how annoyed I will be with the Celtic "fans" who do this when the team eventually wins its next championship, so I will pay the true Red Sox fans the courtesy of not doing it to them. Besides, if you think Boston is a pain to get around on a normal day you should see what happens when you add an extra two million bodies, make half of them drunk and then close most of the main roads. It was not going to easy to get around anyway, so skipping it was an easy decision.

Instead I opted to go on a relaxing nature hike around the Great Blue Hill in Canton. Not only was the weather great - cool without being cold and right around the peak foliage time - I thought there would be fewer people to share the trail with since many of them would be in the city. It turned out I was only partially right because there were fewer people to deal with but the ones who were out for a hike seemed to think the entire park was there for their personal enjoyment. The first people we encountered were only a few hundred yards off the main road. Off to the side were two guys working out in the forest. The first had take a set of TRX straps and tied them to a nearby tree and was doing inverted push-ups while the tree bent to the point I was convinced it was about to snap. His partner was a few feet away and had a duffle bag which appeared to be full of rocks and was doing various lunges while holding it. As you would imagine the scene had me thoroughly confused. The whole point of TRX straps is that they can be hung from just about anywhere, so don't these guys have a doorway they could be using instead? Also, how far off the path they were - far enough to be out of everyone's way but still close enough to be seen by everyone passing by - made me wonder if this was being done as much for show as it was for a workout. (If they were hoping to impress the ladies they were going to be disappointed. I only saw one female the entire time we were hiking.) I can only assume this is some kind of CrossFit workout regime I am unaware of. My hiking partner and I exchanged, "This is weird, right?" glances before shrugging and moving along.

Now, the trail we were on is essentially one giant, flat oval with various twists and turns you can take to make your walk as long or as short as you would like. Or, if you are feeling up for it you can cut right through the middle of this oval but going that way requires going up and over some very steep and rocky inclines. This is the path we decided to take. We were making great progress when I heard someone coming up behind us just as we were getting to the steepest part of the climb down. I was quite happy to pause and let this person go passed us but imagine my surprised as I turned to tell this hiker that and I was nearly hit in the face with the mountain bike he was carrying. Now, there are plenty of bike paths all over this section of the trail but where we were was not one of them. In fact, we had been off the bike path pretty much since we had turned to go over the hill. I'll even go one step further and say that I have hiked this trail about half a dozen times in my life and never once seen anyone with a bike going through this section. It is hard enough to walk through it, I would imagine riding a bike would be suicide (as evidenced by the fact this guy was carrying his bike). Just to wrap everything up in a nice, strange bow when biker reached the bottom of the hill where the path joined back up with the original path he hopped on his bike and started to ride away. Again, I was filled with questions, the most pressing of which were where, exactly, was this guy trying to go and why didn't he just ride his bike from the start? As I said, this trail is essentially just an oval so he could have ridden from the parking lot and gotten to exactly where he was and while it would have required him to cover more distance I have to imagine riding would have been faster and easier. Of course, easy may not have been what he was going for.

That last part is why I never said anything to any of the people involved even though I would have loved some answers. How you decide to workout is entirely up to you and, frankly, I am not in the position to question anyone's exercise habits. No matter how odd I may have found their methods, the only thing that really matters are results. I certainly wouldn't like it if a random person at the gym came up and told me I was doing an exercise wrong. Still, there is something to be said for the fact that I workout in a building which is designed for people to do just that and these guys decided that the middle of a nature trail was the perfect place to work on their quads. When an activity could be done anywhere and you opt to do it in a public setting it does open you up to a few questioning glances and it is not like you should have any expectations of privacy. But I guess as long as these individuals didn't start to act as though they owned these trees or begin knocking people over with their bikes than they can start dead-lifting boulders for all I care. Considering all a gym really does is give people a chance to pantomime doing activities which could normally be found in nature maybe these guys are really the ones who know what they are doing and I am the idiot. Besides, even if they were exercising for show it is still better than pretending to be a die-hard Red Sox fan when you bought your first piece of team apparel on Wednesday.