Gym Rats

I’m not taking about people who are at the gym all the time chiseling their bods. I’m talking about people who are at the gym that actually look like rats. By now you all know that I love observing, people watching, judging, whatever you wanna call it. The gym is an awesome place to do this. However, you run the risk of being judged yourself because you’re most likely sweaty and/or dead from doing the StairMaster for 15 minutes.

Now that I think about it, the StairMaster is the greatest machine to workout on if your into people watching, like myself. It’s almost like your on a tower, high above the rest of the common gym folk. Most of my spying happens whilst climbing 61 flights of stairs.

One day, a yoga class had just finished and as the people emptied out of the room, they were all carrying their mats and their shoes. They paraded across the room in their bare feet. Is that really necessary? I don’t want to see your sweaty feet during my workout. How hard is it to put shoes on? I’m pretty sure yoga isn’t the most grueling of workouts (unless it’s hot yoga, in which case God bless your soul).

Ew put those away, you psychos.

Later in the day this guy was working out on the elliptical in front of me. I don’t know what kind of look he was going for, but it wasn’t cute. I’m going to start at the top and work my way down. He had jet black greased back hair that went back to his neck. I don’t know what was holding his hair in place–grease, hair gel, sweat?–but not one hair was out of place. He had on a black wife-beater TUCKED into a bathing suit. If there’s one thing that’s super unattractive, it’s men working out in swim trunks. Ew okay I hate saying swim trunks. A bathing suit. Like, why? What is the reasoning? You can literally buy running shorts anywhere! Go to Wal-Mart.

It gets even worse though. He was wearing black socks pulled up to the middle of his calf and black boots that looked like they had a bit of a heel. That’s your outfit to workout in? That’s what you choose? After he picked his wedgie right in front of me, I decided to stop observing because there’s not much else to see after that.

Right up there.

On a completely different day, I was running on the treadmill, minding my on business when I see this very large man. He’s wearing a bright red shirt with a maple leaf on it, tucked into dress shorts (I don’t know how to describe them–like nicer khaki shorts?) with suspenders. He gets on the machine next to me, and I’m just chillin’ listening to my tunes when I almost jump off of my machine. He made the loudest, HEYYYYHOOHOOO noise when he saw two of his buddies. He bellowed. There is really no other word to describe what he did. Everyone in the gym was staring at him as he hugged his friends, drenching them in his sweat. At this point I was glancing around the room to make sure my friend saw what I was seeing. She did. We were frightened.

His friend got on the treadmill on the other side of me and the proceeded to talk across me as I was trying to run. I punched my emergency stop button and got off the machine. The YMCA is a great place to work out if you can dodge the creeps. Looking back, I should have taken the spray bottle that’s used to clean the machines and just sprayed both of them. Next time….next time.