resort gym oddities ...

During our fantastic trip to Disney (which I will recap tomorrow), I was given the honor of using our resort's state of the art fitness facility (Note: By "state of the art" I mean that at some point in time it was state of the art. Like in 1982.)

When I first walked in I was psyched. The place was totally empty. I looked around.

Hmm. No bathroom?

OK, I'll just have to hold it.

TVs? Check.

Wait, why are the TVs positioned BEHIND the front of the treadmill? (As in you had to look over your shoulder to see them)

Views? Kind of.

I mean, I could almost see the pool through the blinds, which were broken and couldn't be opened, making for dizzying effects while running.

Equipment? Check.

Two treadmills, two recumbent bikes, two stepclimbers, an elliptical and some weights. Perfect, I have to run and ride. I mean, really, who cares that there were no displays and the buttons were limited to start, stop, faster and slower. And I mean, who needs a functioning incline? Not this girl.

Joking aside, and I'm only kind of joking, the oddest thing about the place were the people I encountered while getting my sweat on.

During my first run, a group of five men with ages ranging from mid-20's to late 40's crashed my quiet gym for an evening workout. Except they were obviously drunk, not wearing workout clothes and just trying to prove their manhood to each other. They held some sort of weight lifting competition and fumbled on the cardio equipment. I was confident that someone was leaving in an ambulance. Fortunately, after about 20 minutes they had enough of the gym and left.

The next day, while riding the bike, a man in his 30's joined me for my workout. Things started off well. I pedaled. He lifted. But then, about 10 minutes into his workout, he noticed the television which I had tuned to my workout standard, NCIS. Apparently, the show was so enthralling that the man never returned to his workout. He just sat on the lat machine staring at the television and texting on his phone. When the episode ended, he got up and left.

The last time I used the gym, I was about two miles into my run when four people came to workout - three teenage girls wearing Uggs (they used the weights and elliptical) and a man in his late 30's/early 40's, who jumped on the treadmill next to me.

When the girls entered, they barely noticed I was there, but the man gave me the "once over" and the eye roll, a typical male response to my skirt and sock combo. I kind of wanted to punch him in the face and say, "I run freaking marathons, sometimes two in one week. My 5K PR is 22:04 and I know my sh*t."

But I didn't. I just turned back to the nausea inducing window and kept running. A few minutes later, he started running next to me. Then, he must have realized the pace I was running, because he picked it up to "catch" me. But, the thing was that I was in the middle of a progression run. So, every half mile, I was picking it up too.

He tried to keep pace. And then it happened. He bumped it up too fast and he nearly wiped out. It was freaking awesome. I kind of chuckled and finished my run. He slowed the pace and stopped trying to prove something.

Let this be a lesson to you all, don't let the skirt fool you.