New Year, Same Me

I recently joined a local 24 hr fitness now that I am permanently located somewhere it's about time. Oh the fun that has ensued. People should pretend to work out and just people watch. I have been missing out in my apartment gyms all these years.

Day 1-

Arrive at gym. View that there are approximately 200 seemingly fit people there working out. Choose to try the most physically challenging looking cardio there because I am a hard A##.

As I put my feet in the safety pedals look to my side and see an incredibly anorexic girl working out with a time spent of 56 minutes. She is also "striding" with an effort and speed that I would only use if escaping an onrushing lava flow. Holy crap.

No worries, I start my workout and have a respectable speed and calorie burn. I am not in a competition. No wait, maybe I am. As anorexic girl's machine times 60:00 she slows down finally, then looks at my machine. I am four minutes in. Whoopty do. She looks up at me then back at my machine. I am not sure what the gym etiquette is for a polite way to say "Step Off B before I show you just how heavy my fist is" so I keep my thoughts to myself. She gets back on her machine and starts up. She lasts for thirty more minutes as I burn calories with a forced smile on my face and try to torture her to death. I don't sweat alot just as a part of my viking genes so I have a red face but still am as dry and cool as an Irish glen while she looks like she's in the final throes of malaria. Take that! Finally after those thirty extra minutes she steps down, looks at my machine again and walks away. Defeated. YEAH THAT'S RIGHT!! DEFEATED!! OK maybe she had an hour on me but she couldn't outlast me like she planned. I guess she had no extra fat reserves for energy in emergencies. It must be sad to be skinny.

I keep striding like the beast I am. Yeah!! I WIN!! And to prove it I kept on striding for one whole minute longer than it took her to walk down the stairs to the locker room. That's right B. Fat girl strode for like 2 whole minutes longer than you once the challenge began. I then exercised my arms and legs on the various machines to delay going into the locker room and make her think I had really kept striding even longer. Because fat girls are better at games too. Except maybe dodge ball. Then they may have the advantage at dodging.

Day 2 - After debacle of working out with the spartan army on Saturday afternoon I choose to return at 2pm on a weekday. I walk in to many open machines and ....what is this??....hot fireman workout time?? JACKPOT. Oh...but they can see me too. Oh well. It's nice to have motivation.

I head to my fave machine that served me so well. No one else is even using the machines so I am all alone. Bliss! I get going and about 5 minutes in a really really creepy man in his 40's comes and takes the machine right next to me. Really? I am pretty sure you are supposed to take one of the other 10 free ones but I am only 1 day in and know very little gym etiquette as I mentioned before. Ewww. I listen to my ipod and try to not notice he is there. Then a smaller Asian man comes and takes the machine on my other side. GREAT. I seriously almost go and grab another machine since there are now 7 off to the side with no-one.

About 3 minutes later my nose starts to twitch. I wiggle it and take a deep breath in and realize it was signaling a smell alert. My new Asian friend is apparently sweating soy sauce or some other gross smell(insert racial slur here). Fab. I try to not start gagging as time passes and it only gets worse. To my joy, he only strides for a few minutes till it proves too much and he goes to bike. Older man also leaves after only 15 minutes. Finally. I look to my side and a super hot fireman type is now striding. I stop my machine and decide since there is so much eye candy today I should maybe stay a little longer and use the weight machines there instead of my hand weights at home. Can you feel the tingling sensation of a bad decision about to happen?? I can!

I use some kind of shoulder stretching thingy(I'm sure I knew the names in high school when I used machines but whatever). Then I move on to the arm curl(oooh lala I know one). I see a lady positioned on the instructions where it says to adjust the platform till your elbows turn at the same level as the machine bends at. Hrm. I can adjust the platform up and down but I am having some difficulty getting it to match my elbows no matter what I do. I start trying to do some reps and as I feel myself being heaved forward I realize...Boobs. That is the factor they are not including in the adjustment. The platform cannot be made any shorter. I cannot get any closer to the weights across the platform. My spectacular rack is now preventing me from getting anywhere near the correct position. What misogynistic gay troll invented this machine and put a woman ON THE INSTRUCTIONS and didn't realize women have some chest-related space issues?? I don't want to embarrass myself by walking away as a few people were looking at me like I might need help(in a condescending guitar center fashion)so I do the best I can for 3 sets of 10 and then walk away. I went home that night and felt fine.

I woke up in time for work the next night and realized my arms and especially my elbows were killing me. They were super tight. I thought to myself I will warm them up at work lifting babies and everything will be fine. By midnight at work, one of my arms was not locked in a 90 degree angle and needed a sling and the other more at a 30 degree angle. I felt like Randy from A Christmas Story. "I can't straighten my ARMS!!!" I cried. Being at a hospital, but lacking a sling I carried my worse arm with my bad arm all night. The pain and inability to straighten my arms continued for three days.

Moral of the story - Stick to your home hand weights and don't use machines that look like they were made as medieval instruments of torture and entrapment akin to the "rack". Racks and racks don't mix.