Saturday, July 17th. Honolulu, Hawaii.
There’s a small speaker residing next to a column in this vaulted-ceiling hall. Though it is small, it’s enough to overpower the shouts of encouragement that echoed against the walls last night.
Today, however, a different tune is singing through them - a guitar and fiddle replace the 808 and synths. Our voices, too, are more at ease; conversation flowing slowly between bars languidly loaded.
“I really like sleeves - like three-quarters,” Harrison says, forming a ring with his index finger and thumb around the middle of his forearm.
“Oh, yeah,” Kate says, looking at her own tattoo. Dave comes over to grab some water as “Wagon Wheel” starts to play. Jessie, Stewart and I begin to sing along and Kate seems to harden at the sound.
“I really, really don’t like this song,” she says and Dave’s eyes brows shoot up.
“You don’t like ‘Wagon Wheel?’” he says, pulling out his phone, “what would you want to listen to?”
Kate shrugs, “I just don’t really care for this kind of country. Most of it, I can tolerate and some I like. But this?” she says, looking over at Jessie, “I get physically angry”.
“It’s a low cortisol training day,” Dave says, implying that he wants to keep the music on the calmer end of the spectrum. He starts listing off some artists until he says Bob Marley and Harrison lights up.
“Yeah, let’s go Bob Marley,” he says, nodding his head.
“Bob, it is”. Sure enough, “Buffalo Soldier” begins to play and Harrison takes off his glasses.
“This one is probably my favorite from Bob Marley”, he says and I agree. He checks his bar, which is loaded to the very end of the collar before he clicks his heels and grips onto the steel, settling the bar on his traps. He had to work up to a 250 double in the back squat before doing some snatch pulls and powers from a deficit. As he racks the bar, Kate is nodding her head.
“Yeah, this is good.” she nods, standing up to get under her own bar. Her and Jessie had been able to work through their heavy triples in the front squat with some speed and were already on to their snatch push presses.
Wes and Nathan were only beginning to get on the bar. They had spent a lot of time mobilizing and activating and were now getting prepared for some power cleans. Nathan is here as a training partner and he has been training just the same as Wes for every session.
Few words are said between the duo, but the ones that are tend to be quiet, with a chuckle following close behind the banter. Nathan pulls and receives 150 and Wes takes on 160, making the steel and rubber look like toys.
As the session winds down, the steel drums and guitar remain. Harrison and Jessie help Kate as she does her pulling complex that requires stripping 20 kilos off mid set. After her second set of this exercise, she thanks her teammates for being so in-tune and taking the weight off in sync. “They were the first ones to help me do it and I always prefer them. They just nail it every time and I’m never left with one side heavier than the other”.
The last lift of the session is Wes taking a front squat single at 235 kilos. Nathan took it first, making it look slightly challenging and Wes made just as quick work of it.
The bar settles and the ground and it quakes under the force of the mass striking the thin layer of rubber. Everyone clears out relatively quickly, save Harrison, Stew and I, as we had important questions to ask; including which character on Mario Kart Harrison would be.
And we were shocked at his answer.