A Trip to the Gym....

Tuesday, March 2, 2010.....



Last week, hubby and I joined one of our local gym that had an amazing price we couldn't refuse.

I'm not thin, but was a lot more active for many years until I had my 3rd surgery in October 2005 (prior 2 in September 2004). Afterwards, my body HATED me. It would ache in so many places that walking was incredibly difficult. This went on for about 3 1/2 to 4 years.

Where was I? Oh yeah, I joined a gym LAST Tuesday and went for the first time last night (I have my own special rhythm) with hubby to meet up with a friend.

She's training for a 1/2 marathon in October and I'm training for 3.1 mile run (last part of sprint triathlon with 2 sisters in September in NJ). However, a 3.1 mile run is the equivalent of a marathon to me.

My husband, has never stepped inside a gym. His job takes him outdoors where there is a lot of walking, so indoor gym equipment has never been his thing.

Did I paint a good picture...if not let make it clearer for you: two goofballs in a gym to workout with a friend.

The gym is packed and finding 2 treadmills together is almost impossible, but we do. I go to show hubby how to work the machine and am having difficulty. The machine is new, but they make them user friendly (they have to or people would throw hands up-in-air and declare "What? You want me to sweat and think?"). We figure out there is a problem with my treadmill, get hubby set up and I hop on the one next 2 away from him.

Girlfriend shows up (I should tell you something of importance, we were going to meet for coffee to catch up) and a treadmill opens up next to me and she hops on. Bravo! We start to chat and it hits me...I can't walk, talk and think at the same time. Sure, I can walk and chew gum or walk and talk, but add a 3rd element into the mix and I got nothing. I told her so and she said it was a good thing we didn't go for coffee (I swear, I can eat, think and talk so it wouldn't have been a wasted trip).

As she begins to run, hubby looks over at me and I ask "how far have you gone?". I thought he said 5 miles and I'm thinking (not talking because we've established I can't do all 3 on a treadmill) he's gone 5 miles in 20 minutes and not walking that much faster than me. How? Well, it turns out he went 5 LAPS!!! Big difference.

The treadmill on the other side of me opens up and he asks me if we're at Global Gym (Dodgeball movie reference) and I just laugh. He asks how much longer and goes into how I should jack my incline up to 15 (this is after I showed him the incline button). I tried, but got to 8 and then he wanted me to reach over and lower friend's m.p.h. button so we'd go farther...

She laughed at us. She told me she didn't realize how competitive we were and I asked her how many people in her life were a 'youngest' sibling. Other than me, none.

My husband and I are the youngest in our families and we epitomize the traits of a youngest. We get from point A to B by stopping at point Z first, clown around, voice our opinion (YogaGirl calls this trait 'whining', but since I never heard of the word, I ignore her) and we don't like to be ignored.

There are many other traits of a youngest and if you're lucky enough to be friends one, embrace them; we're the best.

We left 45 minutes later and agreed to meet up with friend this Friday. I had to ask and emailed her because I wanted to make sure we didn't scare her away.