The Uphill Battle

I really, really do plan on going to the Gym.  I will.  The thing is, there is an indoor pool there and the kids love it so it’s not like hey-I’ll-dash-in-and-out, it’s more like a half hour of gathering swimsuits and gear and knowing once I’m done working out, there’s another hour  of supervising swim time… plus, I have a school carnival meeting tonight.  (Why oh why did I say I’d be in charge?)

In any case, my best bet for some exercise today was lunch.  I probably should have gotten out and walked but it’s cooooold. (Really, it’s like 45′F or something! That’s cold for these parts.)  So I decided to do some stairclimbing.

I had a good idea of where the stairs are and after poking around (and opening some doors I shouldn’t have) I found them.  I realized as the door clicked shut behind me… it locked from the other side.  I pictured them finding my dry, dusty skeleton in the stairwell years later before calming the dramatics and realizing I’d just have to set off the fire alarm on the door to get out if I had to.  (Oh, the shame!)

In the meantime, I started hoofing it.  4 flights of concrete stairs up and I thought I might collapse. Oh… my… gosh. How did I get this out of shape?  I stood gasping for breath at the top step and thought to myself that at least I can say I pushed my heart rate to the max today.

I stuck with it but on the way down from my third trip to the top, my legs started wobbling pretty bad. Enough!  I wondered how I was going to get out…

I tried a few doors and eventually found one unlocked that led back into the building.  Outside this door, I found a staff bathroom that I didn’t even know existed!  Apparently it used to be public but in a redesign of how the traffic flows, it got cut off. Exploring can turn up some interesting stuff.  I followed a mouse maze of halls and eventually got back out into the building.

Heart rate properly increased and legs shaky, I spent the rest of my hour in one of the comfy chairs in the staff room listening to the others talk about the huge container of wonderful homemade hot chocolate vanilla chai mix someone had brought in and how it made a great latte when you put it in coffee…  who needs it?  Right?