This is the Winter of Fitness. It's time to stop eating bread and cheese for every meal, stop driving to classes (maybe), and stop sitting around for so many hours a day. It's time for unathletic types everywhere to find cute little sports outfits, plant big smiles on our faces and venture into that place formerly considered a no-man's land of sweat, weights and exercise. It's time to go to the gym.
I say such words with a mix of seriousness, sarcasm and utter fear of the possibility of their truth. Certainly, as I began publicly making fun of gym-goers over three years ago and consequently took to my bed in shame, laziness and atrophy, I should be proclaiming the Winter of Fitness with my tail between my muscle-less legs.
I should continue to hide, continue to lose muscle weight and strength. I should remain in the rut of exercising only when feeling guilty for ignoring my wilting body, and even then I should continue to "constant move" rather than run. (The exercise "constant moving," naturally, was invented by a genius friend of mine who needed to rationalize and accept the need to walk every few blocks while running; it's my favorite sport.)
But instead, I came back to school ready to enter the gym with a bang and unable to imagine myself anywhere else (prompted by a failure to complete the swim test, an unplanned weight-gain due to moving into a house where butter and cheese are consumed in the way I'd imagine an elephant consumes peanuts and a lingering bad-mood to be cured by exercise).
Thus, in the fashion of the Bad News Bears and the Mighty Ducks, a rag-tag group of friends and I have formed an intramural basketball team (all of whom, of course, live in the butter and cheese house). And I am the captain. The captain of well-intentioned, not very athletic underdogs.
On my first day back in Hanover, a teammate and I bought a basketball. We put on our outfits and gathered our team for the first practice. In the gym.
After comparing the paleness and grossness of some of our legs, discussing the styles of our individual uniforms (favoring the tight collared shirt and short shorts combination) and feeling nervous about the guy who started to look like a real athlete in his muscle shirt and sneakers, we got down to business. Lay-ups and jump shots instantly displayed our rustiness and inability.
But when we began our three-on-three tournament, we found our talents. With elbows in each other's eyes, granny shots made from under the basket and backward hook shots, we played the scrappiest and most enthusiastic game perhaps ever played in Hanover. With the near-expert knowledge of former high-school-JV basketball stars and the raw talent of formerly delinquent boys, we whipped ourselves into shape.
Sadly, one team member left practice on crutches, another vowed never to play in a real game (a game during which the other team wouldn't restrain the defense and cheer while she took and made her first shot ever), and I almost died from running for more than 20 minutes.
But we'll keep going, we'll press on, and we'll make ourselves the favorite underdogs of the league. We are the Flaming Yuvys (named after a friend who won't play a sport but promises to cheer) and we're waiting with untamable energy, brimming confidence and unbridled enthusiasm for our moment of glory. For this is the Winter of Fitness.
All of these slogans in my head, playing to the sounds of Jock Jams, I tried the gym again on Friday with a teammate. Two unassuming and inoffensive girls, we searched and searched for a free basket, dodging real athletes and ducking our heads under flying basketballs, rackets and goggles.
Sure we had lost our chance at improving our mediocre jump shots, we were ready to fold under the madness of the gym and return home in defeat. And then we saw two kids come down a previously unnoticed set of stairs with sweat on their foreheads and a basketball in hand.
Another court? we wondered. We ran up the stairs, and, through a mess of martial arts and basketball games, we laid eyes on a free basket. We smiled and quickly claimed it for the temporarily successful Flaming Yuvys.
But within minutes, a group of guys was on top of us, pushing us to the corners of the court and knocking our shots from the air with their own powerfully-thrown basketballs. They pushed and shoved and talked and dribbled and shot the balls until we didn't know what to do or how to stand our ground. "But it's the Winter of Fitness," we cried. "The Winter of Fitness."
As our yelps turned into muffled whispers and as we shot fewer and fewer shots, the gym jerks planned their teams and set rules for their game. We were invisible. We had found the place of underdogs at the gym. We had finally seen more accurately the size of this struggle to be faced by the noble and courageous Flaming Yuvys. This is the Winter of Underdogs, the Winter of Triumphs, the Winter of Fitness.
