THAT guy...and THOSE girls...

So, I went to the gym tonight...although I would have much rather laid listlessly on the sofa, listening to the drizzle outside. I wore my iPod tonight, in case I had another run-in with THAT guy.

Oh, you've probably run into someone quite like him. Not necessarily in a gym...the guy who is determined to make your personal experience all about him.

At the gym I frequent, there is a main room with the cardio theater and weight machines and then all the big-boy muscle man weights that make guys yelp and grunt and howl, and then there is another separate "circuit training" room. This room has weight machines and cardio equipment around the perimeter and mats in the center to do your crunches and whatnot on. The personal trainers use this room when they are working with folks. I like (or, I should say, LIKED) to leave my iPod off in this room, as the music they play in it is of a good tempo to do crunches or weight reps to, while neither killing yourself nor feeling like a slacker. On the day I am recalling, I elected to do some crunches to get started. I typically do normal crunches for an entire song, non-stop. Yeah, I know. I'm hardcore. Then on the next song I'll work the side abdominals for a verse and a chorus and then switch sides. Then it's back to regular crunches and then the lower abdominals. So, you see, I have it all timed out to music instead of numbers. That way I'm not thinking "ohmagawd, I've done so many of these! I'm gonna dieeeeee...." I'm just singing along with a song in my head and trying to match my crunches to the tempo.

And then THAT guy comes in.

He's in great shape, you can tell. Freakishly good. However, he's huffing and puffing and groaning like he just ran a marathon and gave birth simultaneously. And maybe rescued a bunch of tied-up cheerleaders on a railroad track on his way into the room. Like, so loud that you wonder if he needs an ambulance called. But, as he immediately walks over to a reverse incline bench and starts doing situps holding a medicine ball, I figure he's probably not dying or even having an asthma attack. As he is making the decision to continue, I try to stop paying attention. He proceeds to count his reps out in an exceedingly loud manner. No, this guy did not have in earbuds of any kind, like you might think...we've all accidentally done things while really loud music was playing in our ears, and that's laughable but excusable. But he was pretty much just shouting in an extremely quiet room that is not really large enough to warrant shouting for any reason whatsoever. You could tell that everyone else in the room was extremely annoyed too, as he was prohibiting anyone else from counting their own reps, and was drowning out the music. You could also tell by the quality of his voice while counting that the guy probably wasn't hearing impaired, so I probably won't go to hell for blogging about this. (I make no promises.) Now, remember, we aren't in the big tough-guy weight section of the gym...or the pixie girl cardio theater. There are mostly women in this section, and a few men who come in to do some of the weight machines, but they are all usually silent and uber-focused. The women who were in the room on this particular occasion were older (and not in that fun cougar sort of way,) or fairly heavy-set...so it's not like he was in high cotton, if you know what I mean. And I didn't see any cute boys, if that's what he was hoping for.

But back to the "hero" of our story. Once he finished his herculean crunch efforts, he starts striding around the room, grunting and growling while he huffs and puffs and mops up sweat in a dramatic fashion. I wanted to scream, "We all get it! You're the Alpha Male in the room! We bow to your prowess. Now lower the volume or get the hell out!" I would not have been surprised if he had started peeing on random apparati to mark his territory. Perhaps he expected us to all start taking off our granny panties or something. This went on for an exceedingly long period of time, while he explored the agony and the ecstacy of several of the things the room had to offer. Eventually, pretty much everyone else had cleared 0ut of the room. If he had been talking to himself in a motivational style while this was going on, I would have probably found it really funny and stuck around to listen. But, as it was, I was just really annoyed.

So now I know to wear the iPod at all times, so that no douchebag ever tries to make my workout time (and everyone else's) all about him. Perhaps I'm overly sensitive...but geez, man! Go work out in the big boy section where everyone makes lots of noise...or build a home gym if you can't exercise without making lots of Rambo noises. Maybe it's because I never attended a church where it was okay to make noise other than at "appropriate" times. Oh well. That's what iPODs are for, I guess.

While I'm on the topic of being distracted at the gym, a lesson I am trying to learn is to never compare or compete with THOSE girls. You spot them when they walk in the door, and just know they are going to head your way. They don't look like they need a gym. Some are actually so thin that they look weak...like their spine is visible from the front. I see a few that have TERRIBLE posture, as they obviously have no muscles holding them upright...but they never miss a day of cardio punishment. For some reason, they usually get on the cardio machine next to you ("the non-threatening fat girl") and go to work at an impossibly intense pace. Which, of course, you try to match for some odd reason. Or, if you aren't trying to "keep up", you're stealing glances every so often, noticing that HER thighs don't do that weird ripple thing when SHE runs. And then you worry that she thinks you are checking her out....so you just stare at one of the TVs that are always tuned to some show that you don't really want to watch while working out, but don't think about changing channels until after you've already committed to be on a machine for a half-hour. Tonight, instead of Glee, which I REALLY wanted to watch, I watched stunt drivers flip cars and see who could slide them on their roofs the farthest while listening to "Dancing Queen" by ABBA on my iPod. VERY odd juxtaposition. Dukes of Hazzard would have been more fitting.

Time for bed. In summation, my main thing to work on, besides the actual "getting into shape" part, is to stay focused 0n what I am doing and yet staving off the boredom that leads me to compare/compete/criticize others. Then, maybe some day I can be one of THOSE girls. But better and more wholesome with a winning personality.