January 2 at The Gym

Today is the most important holiday for The People Under the Stairmasters. It is the first day in which gyms are open following everyone's resolution to lose weight for the New Year. I always forget that this means that all of these individuals congregate at my gym on January 2. I am embarrassed to admit it, but despite my responsibility to mock gym goers on behalf of this blog, I was more aware that it is Ford rememberance day (and thus no mail) than that it was such an important exercise holiday. I thus innocently headed off to the gym to swim. The first sign that something was amiss was that the locker room was pretty messy. The trash was overflowing, and there was a lot of toilet paper all over the floor of the bathroom stalls. Still, it didn't really click.

Then I went out to the pool. Immediately I noticed that the hot tub was crowded and there was a ton of people allegedly lap swimming. By that I mean one entire lane was taken up by three individuals who were throwing a ball back and forth to each other in the shallow water. Was that exercise? Sure. Was that lap swimming? I think not. One of the gutter lanes had an opening so I went to share the lane. Normally, I think sharing a lane means that the other person and I split the lane. However, my partner's version of sharing the lane was to sit on the stairs. Okay, at least he wasn't in my way. Then he got out and another man and previewed a new form of exercise: the swimming pool lap walk. He jumped in and walked from the shallow end as far as he could, turned around, walked back and got out. Possibly innovative. Definitely odd. Over the course of 40 minutes I had two additional lane partners each doing something that was not lap swimming.

Look, I'm happy that these individuals decided that they wanted to exercise this evening. Okay, maybe not the guy with the see-thru worn out speedo. And maybe not the guy who was so anxious to get to the pool that he forgot to bring a swimsuit and just wore his Docker shorts. I just wish that they would really lap swim during the desginated lap swim time. Honestly even if they weren't lap swimming, I wouldn't give a rat's ass, except when they disrupt my swimming.

The good news? I only have a couple more weeks until the new years resolutions are broken or they decide it's a lot easier to use the stairmasters. (Or swimming pool lap walking proves so effective, that that guy no longer needs the exercise.)