Getting into fly-fishing shape tough

Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), May 20, 2003 by RICH TOSCHES

On April 1 of this year I celebrated another birthday, my 48th. Having an April 1 birthday has lots of advantages, especially if you:

Enjoy having your loved ones put Ben Gay ointment in your toothpaste tube that morning.

Never tire of receiving rubber dog poop as a gift, cleverly left on the living room carpet.

Footnote: This year I received one of those dog doodoo gag gifts from each of my three children, and a fourth from Max, our 15-year- old Labrador mix who was so into the birthday celebration he then spent two hours staring at a lamp.

Anyway, on my birthday this year I noticed very subtle signs that I may have let myself go. I weighed 202 pounds, for example, up about 20 pounds from a decade ago. And my buttocks were being considered for national park status.

So I decided it was time to get in shape. I considered many kinds of shapes. Running shape. Rock-climbing shape. Triathlon shape.

I decided to whip myself into fly-fishing shape.

I've fly-fished since boyhood. Years ago the Los Angeles Times paid me to spend 13 days fly-fishing in New Zealand. Magazines have paid me to fly-fish in Alaska three times. I've fly-fished, mostly at night, in some of our nation's largest trout hatcheries.

I've even written a humor book about my decades of flyfishing, "Zipping My . . ." ooops, I can't mention it in this column because it might violate the sacred rule of newspaper journalism. (You shall not earn more money than anyone you interview.)

But in the past few years I've found myself running out of stamina on those long, grueling days of fly-fishing. By noon I'd often be totally sapped of energy and would find myself nodding off to sleep and even lying down for a nap.

Which wouldn't be a big deal except I was usually hip-deep in the Arkansas River.

So I knew I needed to get back into shape. And luckily, as I learned in the Life section of Monday's Gazelle, sports columnist and colleague Milo Bryant will write a weekly fitness column to help people like me. Milo is a certified personal trainer with the National Strength and Conditioning Association. He says he has "18 years of personal fitness experience and 12 years of personal and team-training experience."

(By comparison, Saturday night I "ate an entire bag of Oreos and slumped onto the couch.")

So every Monday, Milo will help me - and you - get back into shape. He vows to help us become faster. Stronger. More athletic. More flexible.

All we need, Milo says, is the right information, a positive attitude and a "good pair of cross-training shoes."

The shoes, as I understand it, will help us get our toes into the chain-link fences that surround the trout hatcheries.

Rich Tosches' column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. He can be reached at 636-0226 or tosches@gazette.com