The other day I had this random notion to head up to the gym at the office as a potential remedy for a spell of insomnia. The thing is I’m not exactly your typical candidate for sportsman of the year. Infact my declarations that I do indeed enjoy a run are normally met with raised eyebrows and puzzled looks. It appears that unless you have the body of Sharapova or thereabouts, me of full hips and other curves can obviously not have any idea what a gym is let alone be a participant in any sporting activity but I digress…
So I go up to the gym and just as I’m knotting up my laces on my well worn sports shoes (these happen to have scaled 2 mountains and completed 2 marathons), I glance up and gasp for lo and behold, next to me is non other than Ms Fitness 2005 getting set to do her thing. I quickly send a text to Ti and declare that the treadmill battle is on! And with this resolve, I step into the gym for the ultimate gym experience.
Abit of a warm up here, stretch and bend there albeit the whining of my tracksuit fabric,weights here and there and I head for my fav piece of gym equipment, the treadmill. I am yet to understand why gyms have these huge mirrors all over the place because when one is on a workout, the last thing once wants to be doing is checking themselves out! The treadmill can get abit boring and half the time I’m either thinking about work I left on the desk, or what to have for dinner, envisioning all manner of juicy steaks or hating the sight of me thanks to the gazillion mirrors so this time round, I put them mirrors to good use……
First on the lineup was checking out Mr Fitness2005. This chap is in the gym every single day since I’ve been working here. The menacing bulge of his biceps/triceps and all other ceps indicates that this guy is in the gym for all the right reasons. He is most def not the type checking out the chics in the gym; infact I even doubt that he knows there are other people in the gym. His focus is always the weights section and any other equipment that supports the development of muscular bulges. It is for people like him that gyms exist.
Enter
Ms Fitness2005. To allow you an intro, this one is your typical asian size ‘S’, long hair, porcelain skin. The other day and lunch, the rest of us are chomping down proper helpings of rice (its Asia after all eih), meat and all things greasy washed down with ice-cream….then Ms Fitness shows up with her lunch box and one she opens it, there is a pregnant pause. Forks and spoons freeze, mouths go ajar and even the sound of Lee slurping his noddles next to me is momentarily drowned out by the shock brought on by the site of the lunchbox’s contents. 2 leaves of lettuce, a carrot stick, a slice of cucumber and 2 baby tomatoes snuggly fitted in to complete the ensemble….Shocking ain’t it?!
So anyway, its with her that I eventually happen to be on the treadmill side by side ..after she had done her 30minutes in the walking man machineJ..you know, the one where you look like your taking really huge steps but not really going anywhere…yes that one. So I get on the treadmill before her and once she is on it, it’s like a scene from the amazing race of nations. She has her walkman plugged in and must be running to the tunes of some serious sounds because she is running as though her life depends on it. She also has that pant of serious athletes that comes in timely sessions, phu phu phu, she also has a proper sports watch that she had set before her run, her face is set in a manner to suggest that she would keep running even if the power went off and the belt stopped. Her sporting outfit fits her to a fault and while it will cause heads to turn, its also appropriate for the cause and so we keep running. The best part of this story is I spend a longer time on the run than she did….YEEEESSSS! and mind you I was not trotting about and I have enough sweat running down my nose to prove it. So we have done it again eih, Kenya-1, Ms Fitness-Zilch J. I imagine she has a weighing scale at home, in her car and one with a friend to ensure that the calories are kept in the minimum section. She must also have a huge account and the vegetables corner in the supermarket..jeez whiz!
Then there is
Ms Thang. Girlfriend is one of them pretty Chinese types and I have it in confidence from a good portion of the lads in the office that she is in the top 3 hot girls in the office. She has all the dimensions right and all in all I have to admit nature has been very fair to her in that sense. Ms Thang spots a perfect outfit, matching ensemble; top, bottom and I could almost swear on the shoes too (all Nike). The accessories include the ipod, the designer water bottle (probably topped up with Evian, Perrier or anything but good ol H2o). The first action of these types is to ofcourse to fun themselves and very quickly adjust the temperatures in the gym because its too hot, like helooooo, it’s a gym, its bound to get hot maybe? Then onto the step-up, walking on the moon machine and that’s when the whole plot is lost. The step up includes some hip swaggering motion that can not possibly be part of an exercise routine no?
At this point my time on the treadmill is up and I’m sad to have to go given the entertaining goings on around me.
Now you know the characters at my gym, what goes on at your locale?
