Getting Beat Up at Work in the Middle of the Day

Every Monday around 1:30PM people shuffle into work with red faces, complaining about how they are going to die. Every Tuesday, people walk around like they don’t have joints in their bodies and say things like, “I feel terrible,” “I’ve never been this sore in my life,” and, “please help me.” And the most troubling phrase of all: “You should join us!”

At our company, as part of our health and wellness initiative, we pay a woman named Kerry to come in and beat the hell out of us once a week. Actually, we pay half, the company pays half. Never pay full price for pain.

Not looking forward to Monday? Here’s what you do: you skip lunch and you go to get tortured at noon instead. I saw the zombies who returned from this sick bootcamp, and I wasn’t fooled. In order for me to take part in this, the stars would have to align: my workout gear would have to be in my car, I would have to run into the instructor in the parking lot, and I would have to be digesting a sandwich called ‘The Super Beef.”

I was finishing off the french fries when Kerry said, “hurry up, we’ll wait for you!” So I stuffed the rest of the fries in my mouth, downed my Doctor Pepper, put on my gear, and ran outside.

Joanne, my coworker, who we all call The Dictator, because she’s quiet but you can tell that she’s quietly plotting a hostile takeover of the office, was the only other person who showed up for torture on Monday, and I knew that I couldn’t let her be broken alone. That would only speed her plan for total office domination. So there we were, Joanne and I, running around the building.

I feel great. This is easy. 

We made it back to Kerry and she said, “here’s what we’re going to do,” and she showed us how to do push ups into touch-your-toes. Then she squats into touch-the-grounds. Then she did jump ropes. Then Kettlebell squats. Then Kettlebell hip-things. And she said, “let’s do this.”

I started out on the squats. For whatever reason, I always have a hard time doing the exercises people show me. “Touch my right arm to my left foot? Ok. And then My left arm to my right foot?! And then touch the ground in the middle of me??? Just tell me what you want from me!” I couldn’t stop thinking about all the people in the office who must be looking out the window watching me doing these ridiculous squats. I kept thinking, This is so easy.

Nine seconds later I was doing push ups into touch-my-toes and I realized that this was going to be a touch more difficult than I imagined. We quickly shifted to the speed jump rope and the Super Beef in my stomach quickly shifted up and down. Then the squat bells, and I didn’t have time to think about if anyone was laughing at me from inside because I was thinking about all the things in life I still wanted to accomplish. We did the next Kettlebell thing, where I swung my arms around and was told that I was doing it almost right, and then ran around the building.

Have you ever pooped your pants and thrown up at the same time? Me neither, but I’ve heard about people who have, and it’s a real fear for me. I thought, Joanne is going to see me do this double-action nasty, and she’s going to tell everyone about it…quietly.

We made it around the building fast enough to jump right back into Kerry’s sadistic world of hurt. I started on push ups and she said, “what sports do you play?” And I tried to talk to her while doing these exercises, “Hockey. Baseball. Soccer–” “–Oh my son plays hockey, where did you play hockey?” I CAN’T BREATHE! Is what I wanted to say. I told her where, and we continued our dentist-patient conversation where she does the talking and I try not to die.

Circuit two complete. We ran around the building again, this time slower. Tiny break, little bit of water, start again.

“Just one more after this”, she said. I became deeply depressed, thinking that I was so far from the finish line. I kept moving my body around the exercises in the same way you might if you didn’t have any bones or muscles or blood when she said, “remember, quality over quantity”. Which, to me, meant, “It’s okay to stop what you’re doing in order to get it right”. Oh thank goodness. Thank G— “Come on! Twenty more seconds keep going, keep going!”

We ran around the building again.

“Last one, let’s go!” I shouted back, “I’m not extrinsically motivated!,” just kidding. I lost the ability to shout long before. I started with the squats again. The sun beating down, my lungs exploding, my body going into Chris Legh mode. Not only am I going to throw up and poop my pants, I’m going to faint, then poop my pants and then throw up.
I made it to the end without doing any of those things, thanked Kerry multiple times for the emotional and physical pain she caused me, and agreed to do it again.

Masochist

I almost got myself into a 100 mile bike ride back in September. I thought, I haven’t ridden my bike longer than 60 miles, over three days, why not try 100 miles in one day? I contacted the people running the event, asked if they wanted media coverage, which sounds really official, and the guy said, “Let me see if we have any demo bikes available”. And I thought, This oughta be a great trip!  The guy said that they didn’t have any more demo bikes, and I thought, That man just saved my life.

My friend Jeff told me a story of running a 25K without training in order to win a bet with his brother. Jeff said that he could do it under 2.5 hours, and he prepared by having some beers the night before. Carb-load. The story goes that he was making great time, on pace to finish ahead of time, and then the last mile came, legs going, arms going, and he collapsed and got trucked off in an ambulance. Turns out he was fine, albeit dehydrated, and ever since I heard that, I’ve been interested in performing extremely grueling tasks with no training or experience.

Wouldn’t that make a great TV show? I would climb a big mountain with no experience, slight significant issue with heights, extreme distrust of ropes, wary of carabiners. I would participate in a triathlon, complete with my hatred of any kind of swimming that can’t be called floating. Complaining to the whole time, miserable, talking about what a mistake the whole thing has been, and could someone please stop this. Oh it would be funny. I would run a marathon without training for it, looking like Chris Legh in that Gatorade commercial when he does that fun dance move 20 seconds in. “My boody jist shut deane with 50 meetas lift.” “It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion…”

Remember the first guy who ran a marathon without training? He died. Legend has it that Pheidippides, the guy who ran from Marathon to Athens, got there just in time to say, “Joy to you, we win!”, and then, good noight. Curtains. (He died.) (As I said above.)

A while ago my friend David asked why I hadn’t been writing as much. I told him, “Not enough bad things have happened to me”. And he said, “That’s a bit masochistic, isn’t it?!”. And once I looked up masochist, and discovered it wasn’t just sex stuff, I thought, yeah I suppose it is a bit masochistic.

[Masochist: a person who is gratified by pain, degradation, etc., that is self-imposed or imposed by others.] [i.e. Runners]

One of the things I’ve thought while writing this, and explaining my masochistic reality TV show, called, What a Mistake This Whole Thing Has Been, is that I want the start and the finish. I don’t want to train for months, I don’t want to put in the leg work, I don’t want to read the instructions, to follow steps one through ten. I want to open the box and go to ten, and then tell people about the mistakes I made by skipping the important stuff.

Maybe I had to quit my job and move back to Massachusetts to figure that out. So now that I understand that, I’m all done! I learned the lesson! I can be done now! All finished!