Having recently strained a muscle in my hip while running, I thought it would be wise to dust off my kinesiology degree and prescribe myself a healthy dose of more running to really heal it up good.
At about the fifteen minute mark of a run on one particularly uneventful day, the pain became intense enough that even through the haze of my wildly misguided desire to continue, the need to stop became clear. Frustrated, I lumbered awkwardly off the treadmill and went to pick up the spray bottle and some paper towel to wipe it down. Tearing the paper towel with some gusto, I became the focus of one of the newly muscular regulars.
“Wow.” He cocked his head back, jutting out his chin and smirking. “Someone’s angry.”
I looked up at him. The transformation over the past year had been marked. He’d lost at least 80 lbs., from what I could tell. His ego had overcorrected for the sudden loss by inflating to at least triple its previous size.
“It’s my hip” I said, still sweating as I was wiping down the hand sensors “I’m having a lot of trouble with it. It’s only getting worse. I can’t seem to stretch it out or do anything for it.”
His eyes had already glazed over. We were talking about me way too much. If I had said I was angry at the paper towel machine because I was jealous of his quads, his interest level would have sky-rocketed.
“Hip” he echoed, “yeah”.
I could help but smirk.
“Well here’s what you’ve got to do ..” he began.
Was I getting advice? Was this still about me? I was impressed.
Was I getting advice? Was this still about me? I was impressed.
“You run too much.” He had that part right. I knew I was getting my just desserts. I knew better than to push it the way I had been.
“And you know, running is hard on the frame. I mean, it’s even hard on my frame, and look at me.” He motioned up and down his body as if he was both the assistant and the prize on The Price is Right.
“Now with you” he continued ,“it would be even harder because of the extra weight”. I froze. He went on.
“Yeah, your joints probably can’t take it.”
I attempted to interject , much more mildly than I should have, at this point.
“But I’ve been running for a well over a year, and I was heavier before, so I really don’t think tha-"
“So what you need to do is quit the treadmill completely, for at least three months. Do the bike, lose 20 lbs, then come back to the treadmill and you’ll find your joints can handle the stress way better.”
He grinned from ear to ear in wonderment at his own impeccable advice-giving skills.
I stood with paper towel in hand, mouth agape, and wondered if a man had actually just come up to tell me to lose 20 lbs while I was standing on a treadmill, still sweating and visibly upset. Was this what worked for the ladies nowadays? Could this guy possibly be getting laid with intros like this? I decided it most likely that this awkward rendezvous was the result of a previously awkward wall-flower now being a nouveau-thin.
“You don’t look happy”
He was probably able to tell that from the general lack of smile on my face.
“Correct, genius” I thought, “happiness would not be something I’m emoting at the moment.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll get to run again soon.” He said in an attempt at soothing, assuming incorrectly that he was right about my injury, that I would be following his advice, and that I was upset about not being able to run.
“Yeah. K. Thanks.” I mumbled as I got off the treadmill and tried to invent an excuse to be anywhere in the gym where he was not. My workout wasn’t over, so leaving was not an option. I saw the answer before me. It was humiliating, but it would work and would be easier than telling him off. I went to the bike, as he suggested, and turned up my music.
He gave a self-congratulatory smile and trod along to the next lady.
My time on the bike, unfortunately, was rife with brooding. I had received only positive feedback regarding my efforts at the gym in the past year, and did not take a liking to what I had just heard. I knew already what would follow.
After leaving the gym, I had to stop by the grocery store to pick up a few things. My general after-work-out hunger was magnified intensely by my need for an emotional eating binge. It was unmistakeable. The produce had no lustre for me. It was carbs I wanted. My old friends.
I picked up the items that I needed, but had only brought one bag with me.
“I’ll carry what you can’t fit in here. It shouldn’t be much.” I told the cashier.
She carefully packed my items in as my mind wandered back to the 20 lb comment, and was still in a daze as she gave me my change and handed me the bag. I began to walk away in a fog.
“Ma’am?” she called out after me.
I didn’t really appreciate the whole “ma’am” thing.
“Don’t forget this” she said with a shiny grin, handing me the loaf of warm, fresh bread.
“Oh. Thank you so so much” I replied in earnest as I took the loaf carefully from her hands and carried it lovingly out of the store.
As I walked home, I began to brood again. It was at least half a block before I realized how I might appear to anyone who wasn’t me. Sweaty and dishevelled from the gym, sporting a hodgepodge of sporty and business attire, I lumbered along with a slight limp because of my hip. With my right hand, I was tearing large chunks of bread off the now annihilated loaf tucked under my left arm. Each chunk was being stuffed rapidly into my eager mouth. My cheeks, the overflow reservoirs for this carb flood, were packed tightly. I was sure that if I took off a shoe and started making pirate sounds, people would start to throw their loose change at me.
My reality check came, as they so often do in life, as a cat call. The passenger of a passing car leaned out of his window to let me know that I was a lovely young woman with good moral fibre and an obvious heart of gold, which, for the record, is the direct translation of “yeah baby, do me.”
I began to think of all the gems in this city and why I was beating myself up over trying to impress them, when I had a warm, non-judgemental loaf of bread who wanted nothing more than to make me happy. As I pulled it out of the toaster oven, I chuckled to myself thinking that this day, in the battle of common courtesy, it was Bread: 2 Humans: 0
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