I’ve started going into work and working out in the morning, on the theory that if I work out at work, I shave half an hour off my commute and thus don’t have to get up as early as if I work out at home.
It’s nice, the equipment is health-club quality and I can read all the magazines I subscribe to but haven’t read for three months, and have Headline News blasting in the background to have something to listen to.
The problem is, I’m not the only person that works out in the morning. One of the big cheeses does too, but usually I’m out before he shows up.
Today, he came in when I had about 10 more minutes on the elliptical machine. Luckily, he uses the treadmill so I avoided the awkwardness of having to stop and give it to him.
But it lead to the arguably stranger situation of still working out and reading and semi-watching Headline News while he listened to his iPod.
It was the opposite of silence, with workout machinery whirring and the TV blaring and (for him) his iPod, but yet still somehow way more awkward.
I was discussing this yesterday at work. There is a strange culture in health clubs and gyms…like high school, you must intimately know the rules before you go, lest you suffer the humiliating consequences. One of those rules is the don’t speak to each other rule. There’s this palpable feeling of connection in the air, yet a distance between all parties is healthy, as is a good dose of feigned disinterest. It’s a shared but unspoken experience, like commuting to work on a train, but done in shorts and T-shirts and with a body consious frame of mind, so perhaps we’re all just a tad more vulnerable.
At any rate, it is a fascinating slice of 21st century life.
Hey, I’ve definitely had people violate the no talking rule. I seem to attract strangers interested in getting it on. I guess the red faces, jiggly flesh, and lycra makes certain people want to do it.
Well, yeah. I mean, the whole gym is just a cover for sex. It’s the last refuge of our more primal selves, covered in a not-so-thin social decorum. People can’t help it. It’s the natural instinct at its greatest. I mean, look at those guys leering at you Cleo. Don’t you see how buff they are? How good their genes are? Wouldn’t you want to mate with that? 🙂
In unrelated news, these steroids are really helping me buff up. Can’t wait to lie on the Miami beaches with you 😉