Killing me softly. (And by "softly," I mean "Holy Mother of God.")

I walked into the 24-Hour Fitness gym next to my office last Thursday with the intension to grab a membership price list, take a quick look around, and perhaps consider the remote possibility that I may one day convince myself to willingly raise my heart rate.

I walked out with a membership, five sessions with a personal trainer, a box of intriguingly disgusting meal supplements, and a vague sense of unease. I was nearly $400 poorer, and I had no idea what just happened.

How they managed to sell me a new lifestyle in kit form, I’m not exactly sure. My memory after I walked through the gym’s freakishly heavy doors is a little fuzzy, but I do recall something about a suspiciously charming “Fitness Counselor” named Travis. It’s possible that I handed over my credit card for the sole purpose of seeing Travis put on a ridiculously adorable pair of glasses as he input my membership information into the computer, but I can’t be sure.

Regardless of the grounds for my sudden fitness gusto, I was determined to see this thing through. I scheduled my first personal training session for that Friday. My new trainer’s name was Leah, and I foolishly thought we could be friends.

Leah is, as I found out on Friday when we met for our first session, extremely nice. She’s petite, unassuming, and generally agreeable. When she asks you to perform an exercise, it sounds like a reasonable request, and it’s not until later that you realize you can never, ever be friends. Friends don’t make other friends want to remove large portions of muscle and place them in a bathtub filled with Novocain for six hours.

Leah started me out with some very simple strength exercises. Those of you unacquainted with the experience of weight training under instruction might be interested to learn a scientific fact about the process. Just at the point when you’re nearing the end of your set, and the pain in your muscles has begun to scream its arrival, and you fantasize about how nice it would feel to be suddenly struck by a falling piano, something strange happens to your trainer’s voice. Somewhere between the words “doing great” and “just three more,” the trainer’s voice lowers about four octaves, much like when you slow down the playback of an audio tape to resemble a person in the throes of demonic possession. Coincidentally, you can also hear a deep, maniacal laugh, and you suddenly notice for the first time that the trainer’s eyes are glowing red. This is universal, and applies to all trainers.

After our little get-together on Friday, I realized that I had misplaced all of my major muscle groups. Where there was once living tissue, there was now only warm whipped cream. Walking down the four steps that descend into my apartment, I developed an unhealthy attachment to the railing, and felt ashamed for taking it for granted all these years. It wasn’t really pain that I felt, but an utter lack of supportive tissue.

The pain came the next day, of course, when every last bit of whipped cream was replaced with a delightful assortment of thumbtacks and caltrops. The muscles were back, and with a blinding vengeance. I had promised Leah that I would return to the gym the next day to get in a cardio workout, and since the gym scans my ID card every time I walk through the door, she would know if I lied to her.

Therein lies the real value of having a personal trainer: it is an excellent incentive to exercise. It helps to know that despite her petite and amiable exterior, she can soundly kick my ass in a myriad of different ways, and is licensed to do so in 48 states. At the very least, I often want to run away from her at a swift pace, toppling children and handicapped people in my haste, and that’s good cardio.

So, Saturday found me back at the gym, clinging for dear life to the cross-training machine, fearful of the wrath of Leah. I was afraid my body would mutiny at another day’s exposure to the gym so soon, but I was pleasantly surprised. Comparatively, after the previous day’s session with the weights, my cardio workout felt rather like jumping into a sea of chocolate and frolicking around a bit.

I took Sunday off, and spent the day recuperating and fantasizing about intramuscular narcotic injections.

I managed to bring myself back to the gym Monday after work (I even walked! In heels!) for some more cardio. I began to feel like I could get the hang of this regular workout thing.

Then, there was Tuesday.

Tuesday, yesterday, was Session #2 with Leah, and was the first time I noticed my homicidal feelings toward her. My second weight training workout was significantly more difficult; she gave me more movements to do, increasing the number of exercises from four to fifteen. Each exercise is done in two sets of fifteen reps, sometimes for each leg/arm, which, according to my calculations, results in about 900 reps in all.

900. Nine hundred. Nine-zero-zero.

I learned several things yesterday. Chief among them:

• I have way, way more muscles than I thought I did, in places I never knew existed. And every single one of them will eventually give out if I piss it off enough.


• “Okay, let’s work on your core” is trainer-speak for “have you ever wondered what it felt like to be shot in the stomach? Then follow me.”


• Exercise balls are not toys.


• There are days when even my new favorite railing that lines those four steps to my apartment will do me absolutely no good. And there are days when I will not be able to control the speed or grace with which I descend those stairs.

I hurt today. I suspect I will hurt everyday for the rest of my life, or at least until I finally murder Leah. But even as my arms ache and my quads cry silent tears, I am getting ready to walk over to the gym for some quality time with the elliptical machine. I don’t know what keeps me returning: some secret masochistic tendency? A genuine desire to embrace my health? An honest fear of a small, chipper girl in Adidas?

I wonder if Travis is working today.