I made it to the gym today. I feel like I should tell you that it’s surprising I don’t go all the time because I love the push. I. Love. It.
“Six minutes down. You’re one-fifth of the way through this. You just started. Stop whining.”
“13 minutes. Two more minutes and you’re halfway there.”
“Eight minutes left. That’s, like, what? Two and a half songs. Suck it up, sweetie.”
“Done! Thirty minutes! Now a 50-calorie cooldown on the bike and a half-mile walk to the car.”
Really, no one, including myself, should be surprised that that’s how it goes once I’m actually there. I hate actually going to the gym, walking in and changing into workout stuff and committing to it. Once I make it there and I’m in that place when I hit my target heart rate, it’s just me and a barrier and I’m gonna take it down. If it’s my legs starting to ache or the breath catching in my throat – it doesn’t matter. There is only me and a clock and something with a solid beat.
Like everything else in my life that I love when I’m doing it, I’m pretty terrible at it, though. Nine days out of ten, when it comes down to it and I stop to think, I just want to go home and read a book or check in with Mr. J or some cats or something.
So, brain, what’s up with that? I love going to the gym and, yet, most of the time I talk myself out of it. I think that I’m bad at getting into habits so nothing in my life ever sticks. But this seems like a good time to start some best practices in my life now that it’s all cold and stupid outside. I can’t rush home and hang out with the neighbor on the stoop drinking beer, can’t flop in the last of the sunlight, can’t count on being able to watch the clouds float through our frighteningly blue Midwestern skies and I certainly could use the heat from working out to make it to my car.
Besides, the gym has a lot of really big windows and my favorite elliptical looks out over the bluffs, which the sun is quite fond of lingering over.
e-m-j. 