Bar: Odd comparison, no?

My head keeps flashing back to gymnastics camp these days.

Back when I was a young teenager, my gymnastics team and I would head up to the mountains where the air was thin and the sun was strong. We'd work out on apparati set up outdoors. Every day. For at least one week. And for those of us who were working for the camp ('cause none of us could afford to pay for more than one week) for close to a month.

There were always other gymnastics teams there. They had their own way of training. Some of them were better than us at things we didn't think we could improve. You knew you'd see them on the competition floor in the fall and it was always weird to see them months ahead of time, struggling to get into competition form, just like you.

In the past I used to look back on those days in the mountains with fondness. I'd remember the views, the funny things that happened, the laughter, and how much fun it was to return to sea level and have superhuman lung capacity for a few days.

But these days, what I keep flashing back to is the soreness. I remember being so exhausted at the end of the day that I could barely walk up the stairs to my dorm room after dinner before falling asleep only to wake up the next day and do it again. I remember the ripped hands that ripped open and bled each day getting worse. I remember the injuries I witnessed. I remember that camp required at least 6-8 hours of hard-core workout per day, whereas summer workouts at home were only 4-6 hours per day.

I'm sure there is some interesting subconscius comparison my brain is making between gymnastics camp and the bar. But I'm not bothering to figure it out. I like the little flashes of memory reminding me who I used to be. I like that I had other memories of camp that I'd forgotten. I'm kind of amazed at that little girl and I like to be reminded of her.