Memoirs of a Gym Member - Relapse, Re-entry and Repentance

So a funny thing happened on last Tuesday. I paid for my gym membership for the month yet I hadn’t gone the entire month. Ever since the garden started, I have been going to work, going to the garden, going to dinner and going to bed. There was no going to the gym. And even though the garden does give me a work out (shoveling, clawing, tilling and raking) I’m still the tubby little guy I have always been. My arms are stronger, but the rest of me is still flabby.

Last week I made several attempts to go back but nothing ever panned out. If it wasn’t the garden, it was grocery shopping or eating out with friends or arguing with my roommate. Everything else seemed to just get in the way. So on Saturday, I made the decision to start going in the mornings starting today.

At 6:30 this morning the alarm clock went off and I straggled out of bed, washed my face, brushed my teeth and left my apartment. (Note – I did not comb my hair. I am not going to the gym to impress women.)

Because it was a triumphant return I figured there would be trumpets when I breezed through the doors at my gym. Strangely, there were not. Instead there was almost no noise. I guess it is packed from 4:30 – 6:30 AM and then it is packed from 5 PM on. At 6:50, when I got there, there were probably 10 people.

Following up on Brad’s advice, I didn’t go swimming. I went and worked my lower extremities. There were only three machines for that though. There was the one where you sit knees bent and there is a bar that you push up as you straighten your legs. There was one that made me feel like I was at an OBGYN appointment – where I had to spread my legs wide open and there were two pads on my inner thighs and I had to try to squeeze them together. The last, and third, machine was just like the second except the pads were on the outside of my thighs and I had to try to spread my legs apart.

That was it for machines and I still had 20 minutes left in my workout. So I went over to the recumbent cycle and pedal for my last 20 minutes. Though not quite the experience of Dun, I got to have a great musical adventure. The guy pedaling next to me was singing al of the 80s songs as they were being piped over the speakers. Occasionally he even knew some of the actual words. It was amazing. I really wanted to turn to him and remind him that there were people who wrote those songs that way for a reason, but before I could he turned to me and invited me to sing along. I think tomorrow I’m going back to the pool. A little less talking and a lot more action going on there.