I looked for days for a picture of me doing something athletic.  I guess I am more of a “get picked up and thrown above the head of athletic people” kind of gal.  Seriously, if you want a picture of me standing or sitting, I have thousands. Running, jumping, or sweating? Not so much.

It was a spring morning in 1979 when she was the last chosen for Kickball, the day the boys had finally let the girls join the game.  For the life of her, she could not understand why.  Why last? Why the reticence on the part of her fellow classmates? She was the best speller in the class.  The best hand-raiser and question-answerer.  It had never occurred to her she couldn’t play kickball.  She distinctly remembers the look on Andy’s face as he underhanded the first…what was it called?  A pitch? A throw?  A mind-blowing roll?  The red rubber playground ball, spinning wildly toward her leg…wait.  Where did it go?  How could it be behind her?  Had she missed it completely?  Derek was guarding first, eyes rolling. What was happening?  The 2nd…for the sake of expediency, we’ll call it a toss…comes with a look of pity, and Andy rolls it gently.  She grins and prepares to make up for her prior gaff in playground etiquette.  The sun was hot.  She could taste the sweat on her lips, but at the age of 7, could not have known it was more nerves, and less heat stroke related. She kicks, just barely grazing the ball, mind racing with blank thoughts…WHAT IS GOING ON?…and makes a dash for 1st.  After all, she knows she can run in a straight line.  Little did she know that skill would both start and end the list of physical feats she would master in her first 4 decades of living.  She was out before she made it halfway to the base, embarrassed as she turned away from 1st, and Derek’s belly-rolling laughter which could be heard across the entire playground.  She looks at her girlfriends, anxiously waiting for their turn at…kick?  At bat?…to hell with it…Kickball is the dumbest game ever invented.  Anne buries her face in her hands, hiding her shame that she has failed to inform the 1st graders about her fellow bus-mate’s lack of coordination. Marianne gives an encouraging smile, as if to say, “it’s OK…we’ll be playing Barbies before the sun goes down, and this will all be forgotten.” With blessed reprieve, Mrs. Phillips blows the whistle, and an air of relief washes over her, the same odd sensation she got every time she changed out of gym shoes and back into saddle locks. As she neared the merry-go-round with kids streaming past her at the speed of light, it hit her…Oh…Dear…Lord…

She was failing gym.

The learning curve for gym would never flatten out, but graciously, her gym teachers offered extra credit.  She would spend the better part of 2 decades writing reports about the escapades of The Great Bambino and studying the mechanics of baseball statistics, which thrilled her sports-addicted Grandfather to no end. Thinking college would offer a reprieve, she discovered kids who loved gym class in elementary, loved it even more in college.  The units of study were divided between Beach Volleyball, Frisbee on the Quad, and Frat Party Dances. These events required a more relaxing form of hydration than the public school water fountain, and she soon discovered it was hard to judge failure vs. success when surrounded by people too drunk to complete a round of Dizzy Bat. College rocked.

It’s not that I CAN’T dance.  No wait.  Correction. I can’t dance.

She survived her 20’s fairly unscathed, save the blips when her Father became convinced she was born to rollerblade, and those awful years America became obsessed with line dancing. The roller blades gathered dust until her roommate decided to attend a party across campus, long past the hour one does such things. She hid the car keys, and even locked the bike in her bedroom, thinking she’d protected her best friend from doing something silly. She heard a loud giggle, looked out the window, and watched her best friend blade effortlessly down the street, rather inebriated, at 3 o’clock in the morning.  At least someone finally used the rollerblades.

Her 30’s brought marriage to a man who swore he was an “Athletic Generalist”, not good at any one sport, but a man who loved the gym all the same.  He knew she’d grow to love working out.  He KNEW it. He gave her Personal Trainer gift certificates. He video-taped work outs on the iPod, also a gift.  He begged her to get off the treadmill and try other things, which seemed a waste of good air, because no one needed to beg.  She usually just fell off on her own. She knew he simply wanted to share a hobby with her, and here, the tides turned, as she began to fear she was failing at something larger than gym class.

She wondered if their honeymoon was a dead giveaway to her a-athleticism when he attempted to take her snorkeling, and almost immediately after entering the water, she had a complete, screaming meltdown while being attacked by eels.  The “eels” turned out be the straps to her life jacket, but in all fairness, they were extremely menacing straps.  Snorkeling is much harder than Dizzy Bat.  You’ve been warned.

Still, she swore to herself she’d make an effort. She had traveled the world, achieved the career of her dreams, and despite a list of ridiculous and unusual illnesses, had turned out to be very hard to kill. SURELY she could learn to do…things…while…you know…moving. Little did she know, America was creating a gym class so unreal, so unattainable, that even the fittest people in her life could not compete. She came to the realization that America’s drug-infused, hard rock culture of the 80’s had turned into a decade-long hangover in the 90’s, which created a type of mid-life Renaissance in 2000.  We fell asleep to a sequined Richard Simmons telling us we should be sweatin’ to the oldies, and woke up to Jillian Michaels, screaming in our faces that workouts should involve resuscitation. Anything less was a complete character failure. Richard wanted to hug her, and tell her she was beautiful.  She had a sneaking suspicion that Jillian wanted to murder her, in a very Hunger-Games kind of way.

What started as a simple kick-boxing craze (which she mastered…kicking shit was EASY), turned into a Cross-Fit, Race For Everything, Insanity-laced collective nightmare.  When her friends brought up P90X at lunch, she wrongfully assumed they had become drug-traffickers. Meth sounded less toxic than P90X.  Was it a Biological Weapon of some sort?  It seemed you were sure to throw up if you tried it.

Feeling lost, she took to the books.  If she could pass gym by reciting the batting averages of Pete Rose, she could study her way through this. She should never eat carbs, unless carb-loading, in which case she should definitely eat carbs, and then burn them off.  Load up-burn off seemed like odd math for weight loss, but math was never her favorite subject, and who needed an excuse to eat a bagel anyway? Tight hip flexors cause a pooch, but everyone has a pooch, but NO ONE SHOULD HAVE A POOCH! Strengthen those hip flexors, but make sure they are loose. Get rid of the love handles IMMEDIATELY, although beware, there is no such thing as targeted exercises.  So hurry and get rid of the things for which are no remedies!  What are you waiting for? Skinny jeans are being invented, and you’re just standing there, looking all love-handley! Get off the treadmill and pick up some weights. What are you doing to your joints with those weights? Get back on the treadmill because only running will slim you down. You are KILLING your knees! Get the hell off that treadmill! ROW. SWIM. Do anything but running with weights.  Who told you to run with weights? Absolutely never run with weights.  Spare your joints!  Be kind to your body! LOVE yourself, but make sure it hurts. If it doesn’t really, really hurt, you’re doing it wrong.  If you are satisfied, you have plateaued, which means you will die soon of a heart attack. MAKE YOUR HEART BURN BEFORE IT KILLS YOU! SHOW THAT HEART WHO IS BOSS! Now SMILE! And HURT! Woo-saaah.

Half the battle is just LOOKING like you MIGHT work out.  America loves their work out clothes, maybe even more than their work outs.

Cycling was now called spinning, which looked more like a group cardiac stress test.  Dying in a dark room on a bike, surrounded by sweaty people moaning loudly scared her as much as that stop the insanity lady.  Why would someone shave their head bald, and then yell at the top of her lungs to stop the insanity?  It’s like getting a tattoo which reads, “I hate tattoos”. Work out harder…NO…HARDER…NOOOO…HARDER! NOW RELAX! Meditate! Woo-saaaah. NOW! Woo-saaah like you mean it. Stretch and relax RIGHT NOW. Intensely.  Be intense in your meditative focus. Be at peace with the pain.  Are you in your Roman Sandal? Unless you’re in aerial yoga, and then…get out of the Roman Sandal.  If you’re aerial, it’s claimed you are anti-gravity, which is really only possible outside of our atmosphere, so she assumed it meant you were aging upside down.  And hey, if she had to choose between having wrinkly feet or a wrinkly face, she was choosing feet. Yoga turned into Hot Yoga, Pilates turned into a list of classes which required full interviews with the gym staff to understand which session didn’t involve torture equipment, and a 2nd mortgage on her house. Aerobics turned into Boot Camp, with instructors outfitted with microphones, telling the class to eat a half of a plain chicken breast for lunch, and if they ever felt faint from hunger, eat an almond.  If that gets boring, add a squeeze of lemon.  It will change your life. All workouts were now designed to change your life, which presented a paradoxical issue with her motivation.  In the quiet of her peaceful home, when no one was around to see, she would admit to herself she didn’t want to change her life.  She kind of liked her life.  She loved her husband, and even though her kids drove her crazy, she secretly admired that about them. She was sure she didn’t want to eat plain chicken, but it was hard to think straight while hanging upside down.

She overhead a woman at Starbuck’s: “You have GOT to go to my trainer.  I hate him.  No, seriously, I hate him.  I die a little bit every time I work out with him. It’s pure treachery.  But I’ve never felt better (taking a sip from a 500 calorie cup of coffee). He will KILL you.  Sometimes I wish he would break into my house at night and try to kill me, so I could choke him to death, just to prove to him how much he’s taught me.  You must call him.  I LOVE him.”  Working out was now a religious choice, with the specific workout standing as a proxy denomination.  Insanity should never be confused with Cross-Fitters, who were clearly the Catholics in the new Millennium. P90X are the Nazarenes, making the Yoga/Pilates converts the Unitarian Universalists.  Real church suddenly became relevant again, which is where one goes to grab a coffee and take a Zumba class. But no matter the choice, one thing was for certain: everyone was sure everyone else was doing it wrong.  Join their workout or be damned to a life of weakness.  WEAKNESS, I SAY! It’s like you WANT to be weak! Now pick up that dumbbell and hurl it at the wall!  Praise the Lord, you are saved from yo’ blobby thighs!

Her husband asked her to join him for a half-marathon.  Everyone was doing it. She thought about the stickers on the backs of so many cars in town: “13.1”, “26.2”, “140.6”. She thought they were satellite radio stations. But of course, just running had become too easy for America. Anyone could run. Why not add some spice?  Run through mud.  Run with mud being thrown at you. Run with PAINT being thrown at you.  Run through mud and paint and hurdle your body through almost countless obstacles.  Jump off stuff and land on rocks, dig them out of your skin, and keep going. Be the bloody, mud-covered Ninja you dreamed you could be. Her husband wanted to be that Ninja.  He wanted her to come along. After 10 years of marriage, how had he missed the un-Ninja-ness about her? Love is blind, my friends.  Love.is.blind.

Love is blind.  And not always terribly coordinated.

The night he asked her to race through mud and clear 40 Marine-esque obstacles, her life flashed before her eyes.  Kickball was lifetime ago.  In Information Age years, it was a million years ago.  What could become of this trend? Who could look into the future and say for sure how far the human performance kick could go?  Planking would be replaced with “Push”, which would be so great FOR YOUR CORE (Hoda would swear on morning TV): it’s simple: just push your car to work.  Put that energy-consuming piece of metal into neutral, get your 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock engaged, and PUSH it. But Push would screw up traffic patterns, so we’ll revert back to Saturday morning races. Keep the mud, lose the paint, and add a pack of rabid dogs.  Chasing you, hoping to grab a piece of juicy flesh.  Your flesh is sure to be juicy, because it’s now vogue to carry entire gallon jugs of water around the gym.  She had taken notice at the copious amounts of hydration needed to just enter the gym, and her only thought was, “How long are they planning on being here?” Bumper stickers won’t be awarded for the Rabid Dog Race (known as the RDR), but stitch kits will be free of charge. Push won’t have stickers either, for obvious reasons.  Your ass pushing your car IS the sticker, in case you hadn’t guessed.

She tried to shake off the fear of failing, and agreed to walk the half-marathon. Her best hope was there would be a game of Dizzy Bat in the refreshment tent. So look for her on Saturday at the Indy 500 Mini-Marathon.  If you are also a Gym Class Drop Out, just stride on up beside her and chat for a spell.  She might be good for a laugh or two, or at the very least, a woo-saaah. Godspeed, my friends (or Lori speed…you know, NO JUDGEMENTS.)

*No names or stories were changed or fabricated in the writing of this post, but it should be noted that Andy and Derek turned out to be really nice kids who taught me how to laugh at myself, an invaluable skill to a comedian. Mexican life strap eels are deadly, and the only cure is a really tall margarita. Seriously guys, I can’t make this stuff up. Kathy H. and Holly L., thank you for encouraging me to not give up on this piece, and Susan…I wrote the trainer paragraph days before you told me you wanted to kill your trainer.  However, I appreciate the verification of  my highly scientific research, gathered at my lab, aka Starbuck’s.

This post is for Greg, who never gives up on me, even when I whine that I’ve sprained my soul by working out. I promise to force feed you delicious, healthy food, just as you’ve promised to keep me moving. And of course to my Dad, for being a lifelong example of healthy living.  He looks young enough to be my brother and will probably outlive me, although he’ll be doing it upside down.*