So tonight I went to the gym for my regular work-so-hard-your-butt-gets-sweaty-and-everyone-thinks-you’ve-peed-your-pants session, and stupidly chose peak hour to go. Normally this would greatly intimidate me, so I had purposely avoided going at a time that I knew there would be tons of people. Tonight I wanted to get home early because Mat was cooking tacos, and well, I love tacos.

So I walk in and there’s only 50 bazillion people there. Ok not that many, but a lot. I entered my pin and headed towards the pigeon holes so I could stash my stuff and get started. Walking back to the cardio stuff, I was praying there would be something free, something that I actually enjoyed using. Yes cross-trainer-that makes-me-die-after-ten-minutes, I was desperate to avoid you.Thankfully, there was a treadmill free so I jumped on to do my 5 minutes warm up. The treadmill is the 3rd row out of 4 rows of cardio equipment, and being up high means you have a fantastic view of everyone in front of you – they’re all on bikes and rowing machines. Perfect for people watching.

Directly in front of me was an “insanely fit not an ounce of fat” woman on the bike going hard. In fact, when I left an hour later she was still on it, dripping of sweat – a total disregard of the 20min per machine in peak times rule, but geez I was impressed by her sweat levels. If Brisbane could get a desalination plant happening, this woman could solve Brisbane’s water crisis. In front and to my left was a mid 20′s overweight girl who looked like going to the gym was more of a chore than something she enjoyed, and her only saviour was reading a magazine while fooling herself that merely sitting on a bike burns thousands of calories. On my right was the late 50′s woman who was a personification of the energiser bunny. And a young fit guy that was definately perve worthy was on my left (remember Kelly, look cool, look toned and fit, suck it in, that’s right, he’s soooooo checking you out!)

After my warm up was complete, I jumped on a cycle that had just freed up and started my 20min session. Except that I made a CRITICAL mistake. Have you ever tried listening to a Hamish & Andy podcast before? In public? And tried hard not to laugh? It can be deemed almost impossible. And because I was breathing heavily from the workout it was hard to control my laughter. Very hard. In fact, I started to laugh at one stage and had to cough to cover it up. With earbuds in my ears, and no one else listening to what I could hear, I would have looked like a freak sitting there laughing. So instead I chose to look like the freak coughing on the bike with giggles in between. Way to immpress the hot guy!

I battled through the rest of the workout (and the podcast), and put my ipod away. Time for the weights, and my next challenge – trying not to let everyone see that every time I stood up from a machine it was completely saturated with sweat from my butt. VERY attractive. Thankfully most of them I could put a towel down before I sat down without it affecting the cables and pulleys on the machine. I made my way around the circuit, and after killing my arms and legs and everything in between, I was done.  The worst part about the weights (which funnily enough I find to be the best part) is afterwards, when you find it extremely difficult to put your towel over your shoulder, and get your things from the pigeon holes. If you can’t lift your arms, you know you’ve had a great workout.

It’s funny reflecting on this time last year when I used to whinge and bitch to my trainer Dave during the whole session. I’m surprised he didn’t throw something at me!! Anyways, with the session over I left for the night, and headed home. I think I learnt a lesson though, no more Hamish & Andy on the cardio equipment!