Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

I went back to the gym last Tuesday. Mike and I met there to take a Trekking class, which is a class on the treadmill where the teacher tells you what to do with your speed and incline to music. It’s kind of like my i2Workout CDs without the robotic voice.

The last time I went to the gym was sometime in early June. I used the elliptical trainer and there was no incident, but I still hated it there. I was still mad because of The Bosu Incident. Heck, I’m still upset over it and it’s still hard to set foot in the door.

After all the times I’ve compared it to The Oasis Spa at the Luxor Hotel, I realized that I was wrong. I went to the spa at the Luxor on our last Vegas trip and my gym is way better. There are more machines and the changing facilities are nicer. The only ways Luxor beats Xcel Spa & Fitness is the hot tub is larger and more luxurious, the showers have their specialty products in them (available for purchase at Dandera’s Bath and Body Shop) and there is fresh fruit in the waiting area. I’d much rather be able to choose which machine to use without waiting than to have fresh fruit waiting for me. The more I think about it, the more I realize my gym is a great place. I just had one bad experience there.

It had been about a month since I last went to the gym. You wouldn’t think a month could change things, but they did. All the signs begging you to narc on your friends were different. They had some Christmas in July promotional going on as well. Then, when it came time to scan myself in, the scanner was gone. Now, I need to hand my card to the person at the front desk so they can scan it and make sure I’m up-to-date before they return my card. Plus, one of their washing machines is broken, so they are low on towels. Other than that, everything still looked the same.

The Tuesday Trekking class has a rotating teacher. Every time I go there, I never know who is going to teach it. Each teacher is different, but they are all good in their own ways. Last Tuesday’s teacher was the small blonde. Every time she gives a command, she says something positive afterward. She tells us to speed up and a few seconds later, she says, “Nice!” She tells us to slow down and a few seconds later, she says, “Recover!” She tells us to change the incline and increase the speed at the same time and a few seconds later, she says, “Keep going!” Just like when Mr. Rogers introduced me as his television friend, I feel like she is talking to me personally. It feels like she notices that I’m working hard and she’s giving me positive reinforcement.

I kept being distracted by a girl on a treadmill in front of me. She was thin and had brown hair. I never saw her face, but from the back, she looked like the Bosu girl and I wanted to punch her. For all I know, it was a girl that was shaped just like the Bosu girl, but that didn’t calm me down. The more I saw her run on the treadmill (she wasn’t following along with the class, she was just exercising on her own), the more I realized that she could have kicked my ass on the treadmill just as much as in the Bosu Synergy class.

While I was exercising, I fantasized about how I could get back at that girl.  The best I could come up with was tripping her and when she got back up say something like, “You should really work on your balance. You know, they have a class called Bosu Synergy. Maybe you should take it some time.” I chuckled to myself as I missed the command from the teacher. All I heard was her response, “Nice!”