The First Day Back in the Gym

Five in the morning and my alarm goes off. I stumbled into the closet and tripped over my packed gym bag. Oh yeah.

Amazing how my initial enthusiasm had worn off after only one night's sleep.

After avoiding it as long as I could, I took the once familiar route to the office gym. The locker room hadn't changed; cramped, small, adorned with institutional puke green tile on the walls and floor, it reeked of man sweat and mildew.

I was determined to take it easy, having been here so many times in the past - fat, out of shape, starting yet another work-out routine. After stretching out, I walked on the treadmill for a whole ten minutes, then got my weight lifting card from the filing cabinet for a very light session of lifting.

My goal for the day was to reacquaint myself with the gym, a kind of, "body, gym....gym, body. Don't hurt us please!" routine.

"David, over here!"

I turned. It was Bob, my work-out buddy from years past.

Bob and I go back to when I first got to my current work site and was a work-out nut. He's about my height, with greying hair, a goatee, and sports a weightlifter's deep chest and arms. Bob turns 51 this year. I hate him.

I really don't, but you'd never know it the way we argue politics, religion, and discuss our respective families. The rest of the gym collectively groaned when they saw Bob and I start right up where we left off the last time we saw each other: "hey liberal," I called. "Ha, fascist, what's going on," he shot back.

He looked at my belly, "so what are you up to?" He wasn't asking about inflation or the Dow Jones.

"As of two minutes ago, 226 pounds."

Filling him in on the bet I had going on with my son, he thought I had pretty good chances of winning. We'll see.

The Challenge - it begins

"You and your generation are SOFT! When I was your age, I was in the Army, getting run around all over the place!! I was a machine!" I was approximating the truth, but I didn't want him to know that.

"Geez, dad, there you go again," he grumbled.

I thought I heard him say sotto voce, "yeah yeah yeah, five miles in the snow, uphill both ways....." but I wasn't entirely sure; my hearing's not what it was.

I blustered further, "I tell you what, I'll turn 45 this July, right after you turn 20 and I bet you I can outdo you in the Army PT Test in two month's time!" Dammit, did I really just say that????? Sheesh, I can't back down now - my kid's whole lives have been filled with stories of how their barrel-chested father (okay, fat father) was a paratrooper. I even sang them Blood on the Risers instead of lullabies before bedtime!

I held my breath. My son, built like me, called me on it. "No way old man! What's the bet, lawn mowing for a few months, you wanna try to take my money?"

"Bragging rights, the purest form of a wager," I shot back. I was committed.

I should be committed, I had two months to get myself whipped into shape. I wasn't worried about beating him in the PT Test (max push-ups in two minutes, max sit-ups in two minutes, followed by a two mile run), I just wanted to survive it all so I could gloat afterward.

I've always been on the heavy side, though I spent two years in the Army and a further six years in the Reserve Forces. I was Infantry most of my time and managed to get into an Airborne unit where I (barely) passed Airborne School and made a total of sixteen jumps before calling it quits.

I ballooned up from there, getting to almost 240 lbs before turning into a work-out maniac, about seven or eight years ago, which culminated in running (and jogging, trotting, striding, walking, crawling, and finally rolling across the finish line) a marathon. I was then 39 and weighed 140 lbs on a 5'7.5" frame.

I'm still almost five foot eight inches tall....and almost the same height laying down. Sigh. This is going to be work.