The Gym

I said I would never join. I hate gyms. People who know that I run ask me if I run at the gym. The gym doesn’t even have a track. Only treadmills. And if you run on the roads you know that we say people who run on the treadmills are (gasp!) not real runners. Sure, they’re putting one foot in front of the other, and unlike in walking, there is a point in each stride where two feet are off the ground, but we generally think if you have legs and you’re not an astronaut in outer space, your running should happen on the pavement, grass, dirt or track, not some soulless, mechanized strip of rubber rotating round and round in front of a television or mirror or other miserable gym-goers doing the same thing and going nowhere.


But I signed up for the Comrades Marathon. At 89 kilometers (about 56 miles) it is an “ultra marathon,” more than twice the distance of a standard marathon (ex: New York, Boston or London marathons). It’s between Durban and Pietermaritzburg in South Africa. The race switches direction every year, which matters because it’s hilly. This year is a “down” run. What I’ve heard this means is that for at least a while you have no idea you’re running mostly down, because there seems to be quite a bit of uphill as well. Later on, when you have dozens of kilometers on your legs, and all the fatigue and lactic acid that come with it, you really start to go down which apparently “rips your legs apart.”

I’ve been told by Mike, the elusive running god of Maseru, going to the gym once or twice a week will . . . well I don’t think he made any exact promises but something about the race destroying me less. He’s run the Comrades about 20 times, and although I have yet to meet him, I do whatever he tells me. Although in this case, I had to get a few people to translate his e-mail which was written in gym-speak, a dialect of English I had never come across before. (And I later found out it indicated I should be lifting weights).

Two teachers smugly drove me over with them (smug because of all the times I refused their offers to join them saying that gyms in general and treadmills in particular embody everything wrong with the modern world.)

When I arrived at the gym, I asked reception something apparently very stupid, which was could I try the gym for a day and then sign up (pay)? In a way it was a silly request because I had already decided to join the gym and there is really only one gym in Maseru, but this is standard procedure in US (which I only know because of how many free trials I rejected over the years). Well, they were pretty dumbfounded that I wanted to enter the gym without paying, so I meekly insisted on at least a tour. Then when I tried to pay with a debit card they said they didn’t have the facilities to accept payment with a card. I asked them where the nearest ATM is and they told me to just pay another day (which was what I had asked to do in the first place- pay after my first day- but I didn’t remind them of that).

The gym is pristine and modern in a way that for a moment made me forget entirely that I am in Africa. This inspired a short-lived feeling of unbelievable relief followed by immediate guilt. The membership card was one of the aspects that most transported me back to America. It’s like a Charlie card (for those of you who frequent Boston public transportation), you don’t even have to swipe, just tap against the turnstile (without even removing it from your wallet). So when I enter the gym, at least I can pretend I’m descending into the Porter Square station with a bagel in hand (Massachusetts are stale, tasteless, ring-shaped rocks in comparison to New York, but at this point I’d take it gladly).

Once I got away without paying, they were displeased at my lack of lock (for the locker room) and sweat towel. My colleagues offered to share and then I was left with the task of tying up my long hair with no elastic or clip (and I couldn’t find anyone with a spare). I know this doesn’t seem like a big deal but I have a lot of hair and I ended up using a strapless bra (colleagues confirmed that worn in the hair, it no longer appears to be an undergarment). So I was off. They told me I couldn’t use the gym for my first three times without a trainer to show me how to use the machines. This was good because

1. All the machines look identical.
2. Most of the machines resemble torture devices (the kind that crush you to death or tear your                limbs apart) and I was naturally terrified.
3. I couldn’t figure out what on earth to do with most of them despite the illustrated instructions.

Here is a sampling of what I was introduced to that first day:

1. The leg press: you lie on your back with the weights attached to a platform you hold up with your toes directly over your face (with no safety catch, say a few inches above where your head is). I asked what happens if your feet slip off the far end of the platform and the trainer said, “Hospital!”
2. Some chairs identical to the ones in my gynecologist’s office but with weights instead of speculums.
3. Abdominal things (I’m pretty sure they are not machines because they have no moving parts) that I am obviously too short for and that left me dangling precariously upside down gripping on with the tips of my toes like a sloth.
4. The scale. They scale is actually at the reception desk, not the locker room. In my experience (and my experience of gyms as you know is limited), weighing is something people generally like to do privately. So my gym machine tutorial awkwardly included the scale (because I don’t know my weight in kilograms which I was told I would have to enter on the bike). I don’t mind if people know what I weigh, I mind if they know that I care. (And I haven’t used the scale since my tutorial so I either really don’t care what I weigh or really mind that people think that I do and I can’t decide which).

I went home that first day irritable and with unbelievably sore armpits. Actually, I didn’t go home. I went with the teachers to one of their houses for their post gym ritual of “shredding.” (following a workout video horribly named The Shred*, you know that feel the burn, no pain no gain sort of crap led by women with impossible abs wearing technicolor spandex). I tried to keep a straight face but I totally lost it when the head instructor said, “Now jump rope!” I turned to my friends and said, “I don’t have a jump rope,” and they said you don’t need one. Apparently I was supposed to swing my arms around and jump up and down with no actual rope. In the process of my flailing and laughing, the bra flew out of my hair and I kicked it under a piece of furniture. I momentarily disappeared and I scrambled around looking for it with a sense of urgency; one of the teachers is the daughter of the U.S. ambassador, and we were “shredding” in front of the TV in his bedroom.

My second trip back to the gym was rather unpleasant. I was first chastised by security for walking through the vehicle gate instead of the adjacent (and camouflaged) pedestrian gate, then by the receptionist for being five minutes late, and finally by the trainer for not remembering how to use the tricep machine. When I was finally on my own though, I couldn’t remember how to use most of the machines, or how to adjust them to my height. When I did figure out how to adjust them, I didn’t feel strong enough to actually pull out the pins and turn the screws, let alone use those machines to lift large amounts of weight. So I wandered around a bit aimlessly and picked out a guy who seemed to be doing the same stuff as me and watched him carefully so I could use the machines after him. Of course he was taller than me, so after he vacatred a machine, I tried to not forget what I was supposed to do as I struggled to compress the machines to their minimum size. At one point, I went to get a manager to help me adjust a machine and I noticed there were more working than usual and they were dressed in suits rather than the usual workout clothes. I started to approach one but he was so standoffish I turned around and headed to a foolproof machine I wouldn’t need help with. Later my neighbor told me that those “managers” were the king’s bodyguards, and that guy I was following around (or stalking as the bodyguards may have interpreted) was the King of Lesotho.

*Apparently this was really popular in the US about a year ago, but being here, I only ever heard of it a couple weeks ago.