Gym PSA

Along the same lines as my college search PSA and my Corporate Wife PSA, I now present a Gym etiquette PSA.

But first, an update on my workout plan: Success! Well, sort of. 

I went to the gym with no intention of running. I'm feeling a thousand times better and I'm pretty breathing normally. Still, I didn't want to push myself because I'm still not 100% healthy. And yet, I got on the treadmill, turned on my "work out" channel on my Pandora blackberry app and somehow convinced myself that I could do it today. I could run! I could run far!

AND I DID!

Ok, it wasn't far. But it was longer than I'd done, and it was exactly what my program had told me I was supposed to do. Well, almost.

And here's where the PSA comes in.

I'm running along, twenty seconds from finishing my last interval, and I'm in pain. I was tired and starting to get a cramp, but I wanted to finish. Jog, jog, jog, fifteen seconds to go and then all of the sudden...

SLAM

I hit the front bar on the treadmill right below my ribs. My treadmill had just come to a complete stop. At the same time, a woman had jumped onto the treadmill next to me (actually one foot still on my treadmill) where her son (or so I thought) was just starting his workout.

Had I hit the stop button? Had I dislodged the little magnetic thing? Nope.

The little whore had knocked out the power cord when she jumped on the treadmills. The ones people were already using.

In knocking the cord out, she also bent the prongs so there I was squatting on the ground, huffing and puffing, and bending the prongs back in place so I could plug it back in. It took her a good minute to realize that when I slammed into the bar and immediately started checking everything on my treadmill to see why my treadmill had suddenly stopped, it was because that pesky thing she kicked was in fact the plug to my treadmill, and not because I like injure myself. When she did recognize that I hadn't voluntarily thrown myself into the front of the treadmill, she said, "Was that me?"

And here's my PSA.

When I responded, "Yes" to her question, the proper response should have been a sincere apology. What did she say?

"Oh."

And that's why I'm writing a PSA about gym etiquette. And posting it as my Facebook status. And maybe I'll tweet something too. How long before #gymwhore becomes a trending topic? I'm kidding. About the trending topic thing, not about facebook. I had that posted before I even finished my cool down.

Oh, and I'm calling her a whore and not some other derogatory name because the guy I thought was her son was actually her husband, and cougar seems to be a badge of honor rather than an insult. But they had to have at least a twenty year age difference. He was probably younger than me, and she was... well, my mom's age. Gross.

Anyway, I'm calling this trip to the gym a success. I may not have run the final fifteen seconds, but I would have. And I didn't call the woman a whore to her face, so that's also success on my part.

Go me.

EDIT:
While I was running and feeling really proud of myself, I thought about a post in which I would discuss how the music I was listening to really inspired me and got me through the horrible, horrible running. Then the whore ruined my day. Oh well. I still want to share because these fun songs really picked me up, put a smile on my face, and got me to run (or kept me running) when I really, really didn't want to. Oh sure, some of them might not be "cool" according to people who have bad taste in music (ahem), but it worked for me. So there.

Hot n Cold by Katy Perry
So What by Pink
Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus
Hey Soul Sister by Train
Gold Digger by Kanye West