I’m actually kind of excited for lunch today. Earlier this week, my gym trainee for the first time got on the treadmill. She can’t run distance yet, but her goal is to get into good enough cardiovascular shape where she can do 3 miles w/o stopping. When I first started training with her, she was too loose and heavy to run on the treadmill at all. But on Tuesday(?), after a minute-long brisk walk, she started with a 30-second jog, then brought it back down to a brisk walk, and then 45 seconds, then walk, and so on with me monitoring her heartrate and recovery time until she got up to a 2 min 15 sec jog in her final increment. We were on the treadmill for a total of 30 mins (I did a 3-mile run next to her while monitoring her and yelling encouragement and instruction) and her total distance was just over 2 miles. I’m so proud of her, and she was surprised at herself. I was actually surprised at myself, too, since I hadn’t run in probably over a month. I suppose I can’t keep procastinating on the training forever. There IS that expensive half-marathon in September I’m committed to.

So yeah, today at lunch we’re hitting the treadmill again.

Oh, yesterday at lunch I went to the other gym I belong to that I hadn’t been to in months. I was on the elliptical trainer and this guy walked up and stood in front of me, looking at the empty elliptical machines around me and at me. I refused to make eye contact, as usual. He stood there for what seemed like 3 minutes, while I thought at him, “Don’t stand so close to me! Leave! Go away!” Finally he spoke to me and asked me questions about the elliptical trainer, what muscles it works, whether the machine next to me is the same as the one I’m on, etc, and since he’s talking workout, I got friendly and talked to him and answered his questions. Soon, a district attorney in the building got on the elliptical trainer to my right and said very pointedly, “Hi, Cindy.” I said hello to him, noticed he did not put his usual headset on. The guy and I finished off our conversation about the machine, he thanked me and then took off. “What was THAT?” demanded the DA. I said he was asking about the machine. He shook his head. “Yeah right! I’ve seen him in here and he’s NEVER on these machines.” I said, “Oh. Well, maybe he’d like to start.” The DA said, “The way to START is to get ON one.” Good point. “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” he said. I said, “So I gave him a trainer’s pep talk for 3 minutes for nothing?” “Yeah!” It’s sad when someone needs to come over to cock-block cuz I don’t know when I’m being hit on. Later, when I was doing freeweights, I heard my name being called from behind. I turned and it was a guy that I’d met and gotten friendly with at that gym, whom I hadn’t seen in months. He’s back to the gym after 8, 9 months of being away, he said, and shook my hand and gave me a big encouraging smile. (This is the guy who complimented my personality before. Haha.) Then he was off. And then I saw 2 of my female coworkers working out together and chatting, and we said hello across the weight floor. They said they just joined a few weeks ago. So it turned out to be a strange social hour for me, despite the fact that I usually never socialize at the gym.