Locker Room Etiquette

On Friday I met my goal of working out three times last week. I have decided that I am too unorganized to be athletic. Every other time I get inside the gym all ready to workout I find myself going back out to the car because I forgot something. Normally it is my iPod but Friday I left my running shoes so instead of heading back out in the cold I decided just walk on the treadmill.

Once in the locker room I tried very hard to stick to my "look only at the floor" rule. It has been about a year since I graduated from the family locker room. It gives me the willies if I happen to be going potty and I hear a dad blow drying his daughter's hair, that's weird. In the women's locker room you have to deal with women that are very comfortable with their bodies. It is just rude, plain and simple. I saw a woman wearing a cable-knit turtle neck sweater and no bottoms at all. She walked bare bottomed into the sauna. I don't know what the dress code is for the sauna and now I don't want to know.

Today, President's Day my husband and the three boys all went to the gym. It was so nice to have all of us in one place. Reagan, 5, went to childcare and Bill and the teen boys played basketball. I enjoyed over 30 minutes of treadmill time. I had just moved to the stair-master when the boys and Bill announced that the field house was closed due fumes from a busted light. It was too good to be true that I could workout an hour or more knowing that my family was under one roof burning calories.

It Is A Cold World & Eat Before Running

Monday was my third day of working out. I was shocked to learn that my 16 year old son Enden took the iPod I use, he misplaced his so took mine. Well, it is not mine, I am using it because I lost mine, but that's another story, my 5 year old is upset that his shows are erased. Left without an iPod I decided to head to the gym and workout on the treadmill, I can plug my headset in and be distracted by daytime TV. I set it to 10 incline and 3.6 speed. After awhile I bumped it up to 15 incline. My total workout was 27 minutes, I walked for 1.68 miles and climbed 124 feet. I prefer running on the track, who steals an iPod? Enden found his but mine is still M.I.A.

Today I was all set for a 30 minute run around the track. I was on fire keeping up with the athletic runners for about 20 minutes then I started to see floating squiggly things and decided to stop. I did not eat, I always think I can work out and earn a high calorie treat after, wrong. I will eat a meal to give me the proper fuel to sustain my run, live and learn.

I'm BAAAACK!

Monday was my first run in about 2 months. I lost my iPod in November and I cannot run without it, I am never alone with my own thoughts. Gratefully I am using my son Reagan's that was loaded with one full season of A Pup Named Scooby Doo. I miss running with my Nike+ that records my runs and tells me that I am doing a good job, I need the electronic pat on the back. If I don't find mine I will have to buy another one soon.

After Monday's run I felt like I was starting from scratch, but it felt so right to be back on the track lapping all the seniors at my YMCA. Last April I signed up for an exercise class taught by a man that looks like a Drill Sargent from central casting. There were about 12 women on the class, 8 I will assume were training for the Olympics, 1 was an older woman who was recovering from cancer, 1 skinny non-athletic woman and another pudgy (fat) woman like me. Unfortunately those 2 women lasted about 2 weeks so I felt pressure not to dropout, I was determined not to quit. There were sessions that I felt like Richard Gere in An Officer And A Gentleman, he would stand over me and say , "Come on Newbie!" and I would look up and ask if I were in the right class, he said I was, I didn't believe it. I was driven not to be the last one to complete the drills, so what if the only person I could beat the the 60 year old cancer survivor.

Halfway through the 8 weeks I felt like, "I can do this without dying". I would try to be friendly to the Olympians but they were cold, with the exception of the one woman I met through my friend Tara. I listened to them begging for tips to lose the "last 5 pounds", the trainer told 1 woman that there was nothing else to lose, she was not happy. Some were so giddy trying to impress the trainer with stories like junior high girls. Most of them wore wedding rings so I didn't get why they were all in his face giggling. My favorite woman told the trainer that she mentioned the him during her sermon, that shocked me because she was so not friendly. Don't get me wrong I was not looking for life long double-good-girlfriends but if I see you in the gym smile and say hello or if we are all clearing away equipment don't snatched a yoga mat out of my hand, "I got it" as if I was doing to much.

As luck would have it today I arrived at the YMCA at the same time as the Olympians, they were using one court and the track circles around. There they were all in the matching name-brand outfits, I spotted my replacement, they must have an affirmative action quota for fat people. I warmed up by walking around for about 5 minutes, the track was filled with mall walkers, special ed students and the normal crew of workout junkies. I was going to chicken out and run on the treadmill because after 2 months off I was not sure if I could run longer than 20 minutes. That group of robots were my inspiration, I set Rey's iPod to go off after 30 minutes and I ran.

I made sure to speed up as I passed their section of the gym, even if I crawled the other 45 seconds I was a star for 15 seconds. I enjoy the freedom of running around and around opposed to being confined to following that routine. I credit them for making me do bear-crawls, run laps and squats, I would have never known what I was capable of achieving without him yelling, "Come on Newbie!" and them looking at me in my Target workout gear.

I ran 30 minutes today and I feel good. May is just around the corner but it is not too late to start running and training, Come on Newbie, you can do it.