Gym Nauseam

The fitness center Holly and I are members of has a long-standing tradition of leaving scores of Tootsie Rolls in a bucket on the counter for customers. It seems kind of counter-productive. Work out for two hours in an attempt to lose weight and tone up and then grab gooey chocolate on the way out.  But, it’s the gym’s signature, I guess, and who doesn’t like a Tootsie Roll after riding a bike for miles or pushing weights or walking aimlessly on a treadmill?

The Tootsie offering is long-standing because it had been more than 200 days since we last went there and the bucket was sitting on the counter back then, too. I know this because when we signed in the other day, I mentioned it had been a while since we had been there. The check-in guy, who, like all fitness center guys was too fit for his own good, looked up our account and felt it necessary to tell us we last graced the place 210 days ago.

I felt guilty and way out of shape. Standing next to the check-in guy, I felt like a huge blob. I tried to suck in my gut some and hoped Holly wouldn’t notice.

Welcome to our return to the chain exercise place I call “Planet Fatass.”

We had been meaning to go for some time. But finding the time is difficult. Weekends are shot since I work 12-hour shifts each day. Wednesdays are church nights, Thursday is garbage collection night and Fridays are Dateline NBC date nights.  We used to watch a show on Tuesdays night as well. That leaves Mondays.

So, we decided to go last Monday. Holly has been having some pain in her shoulder and back that doctors suggested could be eased by physical therapy. Lately, my left knee feels like it’s about to fall off and I think exercise would strengthen the hinge. We could work out some and I could catch the Monday Night Football game on one of the 2,000 television monitors hanging in the gym.

We donned our sweat pants and tee-shirts and headed there. Holly looked cute. I looked like the Michelin Man going on a donut binge.

Holly and I approached our gymnastic tasks differently. She began slowly, leisurely pedaling a stationary recumbent bike and then stretching on a mat. I got on the bike and thought, “Wonder how fast I can get this sumbitch up to?”

It went downhill from there. While Holly did meticulous exercises, doing gentle “reps” on the various machines, I got bored and wandered around. I got on a stair climber and felt like my knee cap was going to blast off into the gym when I began ascending flights of steps. I stumbled off the climber and looked for a recumbent elevator instead.

I also stacked on weights, trying to look like some strong guy. None of this wimpy small stuff for me. Bring on the he-man “reps.” I began pushing on one machine with my injured knee, hoping to strengthen it.  My knee started weeping.

We left two and a half hours later. Philadelphia beat the Giants in overtime on the televised game and we felt like we had completed our workouts. Two days later, I walked in muscle-stretched pain, strutting around like a cowboy who rode a porcupine from Denver to San Antone.

We vowed to come back sooner than the 210 days we last returned, hoping we could turn this into a routine. If my knee got worse, I could quit, using it as an excuse to become stationary and roll more APBA games at home. If it got better, it was something I had done right.

We felt good about the first routine. At least Holly did. But I thought about making improvements, about being able to do the stair climber thing without stringing multiple  curse words together, about losing weight and  looking – if not as good as the fit check-in guy – at least better than a stunt double for when they remake the movie “The Blob.”

So, we left the gym happily. And on the way out, I grabbed a fistful of those Tootsie Rolls for the trip home.