45 at 5

I decided to grow a pair in the locker room. I mention my thoughts to goodMood on my way out the door in case there needed to be a record of what happened. They might want to know for the Darwin Award.

"Let's do this before we come to our senses!" Deep wisdom from King Julian.

All those thoughts jangle in my head like keys as I climb up the stair master and spend the next three minutes trying to untangle my STUPID ear-buds. The stair master does not tolerate fools lightly so it was trying to buck me off by slowly allowing the step to unwind forcing me to take another step, and another while simultaneously trying to undo this ear-bud Gordian knot. Without even being turned on it was sapping my will, the hellish machine. I loathe thee!

Finally all is in preparation, iPod - check - full water bottle - check

Let's do this.

I set the machine for manual, forty-five minutes, level five and go.

There was trash talk about your faithful narrator before I attempted this, it's probably one of the things that spurred me on. benKingsley was strolling by me all smug and walking the walk because he was done for the day, the heartless bastard. He says, "We were just talking about you."

"I didn't dooooo it!" I replied.

He takes that in stride, "We thought you hit the sleep button."

I enter the gym to IronMan's taunting, "What happened Bill, decide to sleep in?"

I'd kick his ass except I can't cuz he'd kill me. I give some namby-pamby reply about trying to time these workouts for ABS. I don't know how I could sound any prissier, sheesh!

So here I climb up the steps feeling the sweet sweet sweat start to flow. I ask if there's going to be a rack run and IronMan wonders if I like them. I do actually, they're fun.

The toughest part of forty-five minutes on the stair climber are each and every minute so you do your darnedest not to look at the clock. If you use too much of the step, as in step in too deep to support more of your foot the thing ends up giving your toe a nice little PINCH. That was a source of repeated fun, mmhmm.

I think at one point IronMan came by catching me pounding out some drum beat at I focused on the tunes coming out of the iPod. As my dementia and fatigue grew I remember telling him, "Leave me behind on the rack runs" since I was going to be on this machine forever. I was just trying to be a stand-up guy, I didn't mean it.

Or maybe I did mean it because it looks like my forty-five will end about ten minutes before ABS starts. EEEEEEK! Bad timing Bill! Oh well.

I look down or sideways or something and Bubbles is standing there smiling up at me like a cool summer breeze. I can only remember snippets of conversation but it helped. I think I was around the ten or fifteen minute mark left and some insidious voice that would fall silent as a tomb if I actually heeded it was telling me, "Thirty minutes is enough dude!" I'd hate myself if I got off with fifteen to go. I'd wonder, ya know?

Bubbles is telling me to stand up straight and walk like a MAN gosh darn it and not like my current reenactment of Grampa Bill and his walker. She's right I've got as much of my body weight as I can reasonably get on those hand rails, they, me the entire machine are covered in sweat at this point. My glasses are shot filming over with salt and unlike a bike where you can pedal slower on this bad boy it's one step after another, it doesn't tire.

I babble something down to Bubbles and she gets the point, this one isn't about form, this one is about time and going the distance. She starts talking about having been up at 5AM all weekend long with this big grin on her face. I admire Bubbles, she inspires me in oblique ways. So you were up all weekend long at 5AM with a bunch of thirteen year old girls for a volley-ball tourny and now you're at work talking to this sweating ruin of a man trying to kill himself on a stair climber, and you're cheerful about it?!

I need to tap into that cheerful attitude. I evolve on the stair climber to Billus Erectus and plod on. Bubbles is asking if I've ever seen The Biggest Loser where the trainer gets on this leg bench-press thing and they push the trainer up. The only one I saw was the bike one because it had bikes... um... yeah... I like bikes... uhhhh...

Bubbles is bored with me and skips over to the leg press thing. I immediately devolve back to Grampa Bill and his walker. I look over at the racks and accusingly call out to IronMan, "Hey where are the weights for my rack run?!" IronMan angrily waves delusional me off so I try and talk him into doing the leg press thing with Bubbles on it. He does it. Bubbles was a hoot or I was seriously delusional at this point, she had this expression of a kid about to take a fun ride. I'm yelling out insane stuff now like, "Launch her across the gym!" and being actively ignored by everyone.

I begin to feel like I'm in time out! I mean there's a lot of fun stuff going on down there and I'm stuck on this walker! NO FAIR!

Bubbles is back, "How much longer?"

I glance at the timer figuring I was going to have to tell her fourteen minutes or something, "Thirty seconds??!!"

I did it! :-) For me that was no small feat.

ABS was its usual fun nightmare. I honestly don't know if even rested I could do much better at the moment but Bubbles is inventive and it's fun and I can't do 80% of it but I try. You should come by for fifteen on these things. I'm serious, I don't think it's the stair climber talking :-)

Have a great day!