Elizabeth Goes to the Weight Room

I’m not much of an athlete…I’ve always been more intellectually-focused. (Translation: I’d rather have my nose in a book or a computer than get off my butt and exercise) Because of this, I’m not exactly familiar with athletic-type stuff. Such as weight rooms.

My total experiences in gyms at this point in my life has been about 4 or 5 visits to the weight room throughout my 4 years of college. Most of those being before my spring break trip to Florida my sophomore year (very small bikini=motivation).

So I decided last weekend that I was going to start working out. As a staff member, I get free access to the university weight room. Tonight was my first visit (only took 4 days of working up the motivation to do it…).

I got off work, got in my car, drove to the athletic center (about 100 yards from my office), and changed clothes. I then headed downstairs to the weight room.

After getting turned around 3 or 4 times—stupid hallways that all look the same—I made it into the room. Rather intimidating. There were about 8-10 very hot guys in excellent shape all apparently knowing what they were doing. A few guys from the basketball, track, and soccer teams. Mmmmm…quite a few guys from the athletic teams. You know…I bet they’re all single…no time to date anyone with all the time they spend working out. Did I mention the hot guys?

Oh…um…yeah…back to the people in the room. Quite a few girls from the track team. I ignored them; it was rather demoralizing. An older couple (not really sure who they were; it’s supposed to be only students and staff, and I didn’t recognize either of them) and a really disgusting sweaty old overweight guy. Really disgusting. So back to the hot guys…

Is it a bad sign that the only pieces of exercise equipment I even recognize are the treadmills, stair-steppers, exercise bikes, and rowing machines? There’s this whole area of machines I wouldn’t even know what to do with. I’d probably end up using a leg machine to try to work my arms or something.

I decide on the treadmill…can’t go wrong with that! Or maybe I can. The first one I try is broken. Only one left is between two of the aforementioned hot athletic guys. In front of one of the TVs showing ESPN. Did I mention that even though I have over 100 CDs sitting in my car, I forgot to bring my CD player? So no distractions. And no hiding, pretending to ignore everyone around me.

I started out walking kind of slowly, trying to warm up. I sped up the machine…too fast. Slowed it down…too slow. Sped it up again…too fast. Notice a pattern here? Tired of looking like an idiot, I decided to just slow it down enough to keep walking. By this point, my calves were starting to feel kind of sore. I checked my time, figuring I had probably been going for at least 15-20 minutes. Um…11 minutes. Great. The goal was 30.

Summary: 1.8 miles, 30 minutes, 3 hairstyles (had to do something while I was walking)

I should be a professional athlete.