Learning to Go the Distance

Before they split up the rowing machines at our local gym my husband and I would sit down side by side, plug in our music players and tear up 8,000 meters. If you’ve never tried the rowing machine I highly recommend it, but bring your A game. Even professional (Olympic) rowers call it a high tech torture device. Most people sit down, pull on the wheel and then give up. Done correctly, the erg will raise your heart rate in less than 2 minutes (and by raise your heart rate I mean you will feel like it’s about to explode). Shortly after they split them up I stopped rowing…and promptly gained 35 pounds. Actually, gaining that weight was a combination of things but at least one of them was I lost my motivation in the form of a competitive gym buddy. We didn’t talk to each other, before or after, we just raced. I didn’t have to be great, I just had to be better than the guy rowing next to me.

As I was leaving the gym one night and a friend I knew from the rowing team (both our kids were on it) asked me how I liked it and about how far I rowed. Her mouth dropped open at the answer. “My friend and I row, too,” she said with a confused look. “But, we usually only row 2,000 meters. We row, we chat a bit, we row, we chat a bit, we take a break for juice and then we row a bit more.” I asked her how much weight she had lost (she told me she followed her gym workout with a weight loss program meeting) and her answer was zero. “I just can’t figure it out.” As she got into her car she hollered “call me. we can meet up at the gym…or the margarita place. Your choice.”

My friend’s idea of a gym partner was someone to hang out with and her idea of a good workout was one where her heart rate never got so high she couldn’t carry on a steady conversation. I have a lot of those friends. They put on sweats, they show up but they aren’t there to accomplish anything . If I’m being honest, for a while, I forgot what I came for, too. With no one to challenge me I phoned in my workouts and coasted. Until I started getting winded going up the stairs and couldn’t button size 16 pants.

My weight loss and weight gain experiences have taught me that I can’t trust myself for a solo workout. I spin. I go to Zumba. I lift weights – all with a group. I’m willing to do whatever has a plan because I’m terrified of falling backwards if left to my own devices. If I don’t show up, other people ask me where I’ve been. They text. They email. They hound me on Facebook and I love them for it. I need someone to lean on while I work myself down from these scary scale numbers and group exercise is full of friends.

Eventually, I’ll get to the point where I can sit down next to someone and invite them to push me and expect me to push back – on a one to one, we’ll construct our own plan kind of way. I look forward to that day. Until it comes, however, I’m working on asking myself to go the same distance as the people around me. I believe I’ll say yes.