Wednesday May 28th, 2003
Meeting God at the Gym
Ever since my best friend Ross got his drivers license I've had several brushes with death but nothing could have prepared me for tonight.
Admittedly the diet and exercise thing hasn't been going as well as I would have hoped. In fact tonight was my first trip to the gym in over two weeks. This being the case I felt a need to push myself unusually hard. After an hour on various medieval contraptions it was time for the part of my routine that all fat people dread, the treadmill. Only through the detailed writings of Sci-fi Anthologies and Schwarzenegger movies do I have some concept of how it might feel to be thrown out of an air lock into a spacious vacuum. That was roughly the feeling I got after finishing the first half-mile of my run. Ignoring my body's natural urge to drop to the ground and convulse, I pushed on paying my penance for the number four I had for lunch. Completing the first mile I began to get tunnel vision and could taste the glass of apple juice I had before leaving for the gym.
I was pushing myself hard. Farther than I wanted to go. Farther than my body wanted to go. I pushed myself to the edge of my frail human ability for one reason and one reason alone. Women. This treadmill was my dragon protecting beer commercial babes in a castle tower and my determination was the sword with which to slay it. I felt like I was going to die but I pressed on. On the outside I was a fat man humorously jiggling my rolls to the beat of a Mariah Carey song playing on the loud speakers but inside I was screaming. Inside I was a drill sergeant screaming at my legs to keep going until they would break. Inside I felt like I was fighting a war to survive. Such pain. If my appendix had burst I wouldn't have noticed. I believe it was just moments before completing my second mile when it happened.
I didn't feel like I could go much further but I wanted to at least finish two miles so I did the logical thing for any idiot in a Saturday Night Live sketch and turned the machine up to run faster. This worked for about thirty seconds before I threw up. I fell to the ground from the shock of the apple juice and cheeseburger lava that had found its way in my mouth. I managed to catch most of it in my mouth and swallow it except for a few pieces that landed on the shoes of the girl next to me when my head hit the floor. She seemed more concerned for me than her shoes though, that or she didn't notice.
At that moment my life flashed before my eyes. It felt like a preview for a really bad reality T.V. show that tries to convince you it's interesting but you don't even care enough to make fun of it. At this point the hot blonde was next to me asking if I was all right. I would have tried to hit on her if not for her boyfriend behind her with the robe and sickle. Today the dragon defeated me, but I will try again tomorrow.
Related articles:
Gym Trip
Gym Girl
