Some Fitness Goddesses are Best Backed Away From
Struggling to find the one minute it takes to pull on sweats
God only help you should you accidentally walk in on me while I am exercising on the treadmill in my home. What you would see would remain in your visual memory and you would not want that.
I didn’t always use a treadmill. When I was in my twenties I managed to get enough exercise doing whatever it was I did back in my twenties. Going to the movies with friends. Yes, that was it. Chatting on the phone was enough to keep me fit and strong.
In my early thirties, I joined a gym because I thought that was what one did when they reached their thirties. I couldn’t compete with the work-out-regularly gals, but that did not bother me. I would watch them as they finished with whatever weight bearing machine they had been using and then I would go ask the nice desk person to remove all their weights so I could put on my single 5-pound piece. Then, I would puff hard through my twenty reps and go ask the nice desk person to re-do all the weights on the next machine. This never irritated the desk person because helping me through fifteen different stations became their workout and envious friends asked them where on Earth they found all the time.
By my late thirties, I was too busy to get to the gym. That ten minute drive across town was waaaay too much to fit into a calendar apparently, so instead, I pulled some sweats and hit the pavement in my own neighborhood. Children playing in tidy yards would stop and line the street to crane their heads and watch my “wogging” as they called it, since it was not exactly walking. How far would it be this time before Sweats Lady would lose her breath, massage her ribcage and return to, yes, exactly walking? Peals of laughter. On one occasion I thought I saw currency exchange hands but I might have been mistaken.
Nowadays, I cannot seem to find the time for the pulling-on-the-sweats part, let alone stepping out the door. My husband became so tired of my pity fests that he bought me a used treadmill and installed it in our spare room. I quickly came to love the machine. It’s from Sears and the control panel looks eerily like the retro Zenith television consoles that I grew up with in the 1960’s. On/off volume. Nothing else. What more do you need? Close the door and I’m in my private cardio world. I get the thing ramped up to the first notch: “SLOW BEGINNER WALK” and jump on. Look! I am becoming fitter by the minute and if you don’t hurry, you’re gonna miss this miracle.
Which brings us back to the scene you might unfortunately walk in on. I was not joking about not having the time to get into exercise clothes, so you must be prepared to find me on the treadmill going full speed in either my thick terrycloth bathrobe or my flannel Wonder Woman pajamas. It will be, whatever I happened to be wearing when I realized I had a a full 10 minutes to exercise. By the time I reach my fifties, my workouts will have to take place when I’m asleep ’cause I won’t be able to find the time for the getting out of bed part.
So on go my headphones, up goes the speed and there I go, striding away. I’m lost in a hot, Caribbean beat. Strutting now, because not only am I stronger, I am accumulating super hero powers. Reality need not apply and like other closed door moments in my life, I let myself go completely. Or perhaps that would be the better choice for everyone concerned, letting myself go completely and not bothering with any exercise at all.
Am I finished yet? (wink) Pay no attention to those sounds: that’s just the pajama friction thing.
Or maybe that’s you, closing the door behind you in a hurry.
