The Gym and Me

I made it! I made it to the gym. After all that hemming, hawing and crying, I stepped foot in my new place of fancy cardio equipment. And it is pretty much as I expected: a healthy mix of torture and calorie burning.

On my first outing to the dreaded gym, I took a yoga class. Since I've been practicing yoga off and on for nearly a decade, I thought it would be a painless transition into meeting my mortal enemies: The cardio machines.

The hour-long class went as expected. There were five other people of varying levels stretching and balancing around me. Afterward, I decided to give the elliptical a spin. I was relieved when I noticed only one person in the cardio area. In no time I found myself huffing and counting the calories along with the ticker on the top of the screen.

About a third of the way into my 30-minute circuit (I chose weight loss -- again, not so sure how it happened), I had a serious panic attack. A pro-looking gal came up, wiped down the machine next to me and started hoofing it. Ugh. I couldn't stand it. I was convinced she was looking at me going slowly and judging the fact that I burned only a few calories. She stepped along and watched TV while I was there sweating. It was so bad. I slowed down, jumped off the machine, wiped it off with the sani-wipe thingies from the dispenser on the wall and hightailed it out of there.

My second visit I did a 30-minute circuit on the elliptical again. This time I had a neighbor but was grateful for it. I watched her as she started the machine (turns out just stepping gets it going) and gave a sideways glance to figure out where in the heck the headphones jack was located. I was unable to drink my water, though, because somehow I couldn't find enough balance to take off the cap and do the stepping.

My third trip to my local gym went swimmingly better. I was all alone, prepped my water bottle with the cap off, tuned into some MTV and worked out on two machines. After my half hour on the elliptical (hey, I've got to keep up with what I know), I headed over to the treadmill. I'm not much of a runner, but I love walking. I hit the quick switch and added another hour to my total time at the gym that day. Midway through my walk, a burly guy came in and did some intense incline walking on his treadmill followed by what looked like wind sprints. And it didn't faze me. I just kept on trucking and told myself that he probably thought I was doing my cooldown. I'm so accustomed to my little routine now that I've been hitting my new gym three times a week. Now if I could just figure out how change the channel on those TVs.

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