Training, Tuesday Night:

I get ready with trepidation.
I go because something very deep in me makes me go.
I know I will be happy once I start.
It is refreshing to see the others coming in. I know I won’t be alone.
Being alone or one of three in this class is like being in a College round table class.
There is no chair in the back of the room. There is no way to feign participation.
This demands active participation. This demands sweat. This demands effort scrawled across the face.
This demands being able to eat two large bowls of PAIN and asking for more.
But unlike the Urchin in Oliver, who did not get a second bowl of gruel, another bowl of PAIN is easily served up.
The trainer comes into the room, evil grin, cut across a determined face.
Seems someone challenged the trainer as “just a girl”.
That is a dumb thing to do.
Do you challenge a Cheetah to a race? Do you challenge a Grizzly to a test of strength?
This is not a “girl”. This is a honed machine. She is so high on life and exercise, you only pray you get one-half of this joy. A full dose to the untrained might be lethal.
Turning to the group, she says I guess I’ll have to take some of my “frustration with this bozo” out on you.
The group appears to physically shrink as she calls out the stations and the exercises we would encounter over the next hour.
Only actual medical excuses (here are the stitches from this mornings surgery), obvious “open bleeding wounds” or an abnormal EKG would be a valid reason to go a little slower.
It turns out some “kindness” is offered. Between sets, running the stairs, punching the heavy bag, etc. she says, “take a breath” and like people wandering into an oasis from days in the desert, deep draughts of cool air are inhaled to replenish oxygen long gone from muscle and brain.
Then the question, “are we all back?” “Let’s get going”.
It is interesting, the second time through the exercises, I frequently feel like I left my brain a few breaths short of oxygen because the punch sequences really elude me. Everyone looks a little hazy, like a Courier and Ives Christmas Card. I seem to float or stumble through the last part but I make it and even keep up during the last 10 minutes of crunches, leg lifts and finally the glorious stretch when muscle is pulled back into place, attached to bone and joints slowly reorganize.
As my one exercise partner says, “getting old ain’t for sissies”. “I say this (exercise-Ultimate Fitness-Boot Camp or whatever) is not for sissies”.
It requires strong “teeth” and a “taste “for pain, which is best served cold.
Plenty of oxygen also helps.