Accused of cheating on leg day

Tuesday. Leg day. My favourite. And today my gym crew looked me dead in the eye and basically accused me of cheating.

In fairness to them, they had a point. Leg day is my day — the one where I show up ready to go to war. But today I went in with legs already tight from three days of running and lifting, and my body quietly decided we’d be taking it easy whether my ego agreed or not. So I did what any dignified athlete does when he’s secretly pacing himself: I talked too much. I socialized. I found “clever” reasons for slightly longer rests between sets. I was, in their words, “finding ways to take longer breaks.”

They were not fooled. “Chief, you’re messing around today.”

But here’s my favourite moment. There’s this machine — looks and feels like a leg press, but plate-loaded, the kind that lets you really stack it on. And on that one, I went hard. Full effort. Which my crew immediately clocked: “Chief, did you just go harder on this one while slacking on the others?”

And I said: “Bro, my coach says the Comrades down-run is won on strong quads, and my running route is mostly downhill, so I need these babies to be strong.”

Silence. Possibly respect. Possibly they just didn’t want to argue with a man citing sports science mid-set. Either way — victory.

(For the record, this is actually true. Downhill running batters the quads more than anything, and strong quads are what stop your legs falling apart on the descents. So I wasn’t just deflecting. I was deflecting with evidence.)

The grand finale: by the end my legs were pure Christmas jelly. I could not walk down the gym stairs like a functioning adult. It was so undignified, and I was so distracted by the business of remaining upright, that I completely forgot to stop my watch.

It is still, as far as my watch is concerned, the greatest workout of my life. Duration: 2 hours, 5 minutes, 38 seconds. A monument to a man who couldn’t find the stop button because his quads had resigned.

Strong quads for the down-run, though. That’s the story and I’m sticking to it.