Pretending it's the home stretch

because it basically is ...

I've exhausted my alphabetic book of excuses ending with zygodactyl zydeco zebras zipping zephyrs zealously ... next time I'll get the unabridged book of excuses.

Anyway - for whatever reason I'm having trouble finding a road, a hill or a track to run on, so today I opted for plan Q ... obviously plans B through P didn't pan out well either.  I headed to the gym and found it crawling with my favorite creatures - gym rats.  From the oblivious people who have no clue how to use the equipment to the obnoxious who seem to go out of there way to be in people's way or hog the equipment ... I opted for the stair-stepper - 30 min level 2 & 3 and feeling surprisingly strong and not winded.

After getting off the stepper I paced around the cardio equipment waiting for either a treadmill or an elliptical.  I did get a good laugh watching all the people doing bizarre things that vaguely resemble exercising on the equipment, like the guy who was doing the gazelle leap at a very fast pace, but his feet were barely touching the treadmill, or the lady who had the treadmill at the max incline and was holding on for dear life.  Eventually this lady finished her ... walk?? and had to do her ... stretching???  Of course the fact that there were now 3 people waiting for the machines made no difference ... I was first in line, the little angry gym rat in training had been waiting an entire 2 minutes and another guy was waiting at the far end of the row.  Before the stretchy lady could finish her whatever she was doing (I actually think she got her foot stuck on the control panel of the treadmill) another machine opened up.  I was about to step on when I saw gym rat jr in the mirror charging up behind me - like actually almost running.  I wasn't willing to have a confrontation over a treadmill (and unlike a swimming lane, we couldn't share it ... sorry Julie couldn't resist ;-)  )  So he jumped on the first machine just as the stretchy lady finally jumped off her machine so I didn't have to wait too long.

I did 30 minutes on the treadmill at a moderate walk increasing the incline for the first 20 minutes and then going back down during the last 10.  Overall I'd say I accomplished what I wanted ... I just dread the gym rats (both male and female) but I did my best to ignore them and just enjoy my music and my training.