Gyms Are Strange / A Fitness Background

For the most part I've been pretty lucky.  I was a chubby baby, rolls on my leg rolls, and not much of a neck to speak of, but I leaned out in my grade school years, and my mom started me running and going to the gym before I hit double digits.

Today, I step-milled next to a really fit 27 y/o named Kelly.  We chatted, it made the time go by quickly.  Well, my whole 35 minutes before the childcare center closed.  She of course did an hour and 45 minutes at a speed almost twice mine.  Without thinking, I asked her if she was a gym rat or did something else.  She said gym rat and didn't seem offended.  That's so odd.  I looked around and really started thinking.  How many of these people are just here for their bodies?  I mean just how they look.  Okay maybe health too, but really to change or keep their figure.  They have no goal, no focus, no other reason to be there.  More reps, more weight, longer time on the step-mill.  I'm not saying that's bad or wrong.  It's just odd to me now.

But it shouldn't be odd. I was a gym rat for years, and loved it.  These are from Gold's Gym in Redondo Beach, CA in the early 90's.  Forgive the Pebbles Flinstone hair; I could never get a pony tail to stay in and hated the hair on my back.  And please appreciate the spandex and tall socks!  I have no shame.

I did aerobics, step classes, kick-boxing, spinning, free weights, and even the mind numbing machines for what seems like millions of years.  I did two 5k's in college.  In 2000 I ran my first half marathon as a fluke.  I couldn't walk for three days.  For the next three years, I ran the same half marathon on super bowl Sunday without a day of training, and paid for it each time.

In September of 2004 I started training for a marathon.  It got me out of the gym for the first time in my life.  I had almost 30 miles of strand between Huntington Beach and Newport Beach to run along.  I loved it, I mean really fell in love with life outside the gym.  I didn't stop going to the gym, just added awesome 17-21 miles runs a few times a week.  I ran my first marathon early that December and another in February just about a minute apart, 3:44 and 3:45, if I remember correctly.

On Valentine's Day of 2005, I drove across the country and moved to Charlotte.  That May I started mountain biking, and by the next Spring I gave up the gym after I did my first mountain bike race.  Mountain bike racing was nothing like the run races I'd done in the past.  Run races are you against your best time, or at least they were for me.  I was never elite, never going to win, that's even silly to type.  But mountain biking racing was different.  I was green, totally new, running my bike on the sections I didn't know how to ride and yet chasing the girls in front of me with everything I had.   I mean everything.  I went as fast as I could.  Worked harder in a hour and 20 minute bike race than I did in a marathon.  It was the best feeling.  The biggest high.  I was addicted immediately.  And have been ever since.

Now I am broken, back in the gym and hating life, well as much as you can with the most adorable 2 y/o ever.  And here are all these gym rats around me.  Are they athletes?  Do we have anything in common?  It sure doesn't feel like it.

Some day I will be back with my mountain biking friends, back with the Dirt Divas, maybe even racing with the guys again.  I will get another bike, I will ride again, I will race again.  And I will keep repeating this in my head until it comes true.