Suzy Says

Sometimes, your lightest remark can have serious consequences.

One day last week when I arrived at the gym and greeted my tireless trainer, I mentioned that it was a nice day. It was, too, especially considering it’s winter, aka the rainy season: sunny and around 66? F (or 18? C), and the caf?s’ outdoor tables were full of people enjoying the sun in a civilized manner, with a glass of wine or a cup of coffee. But my remark gave my trainer a different idea of how we were going to enjoy this lovely day: doing lunges up this hill.

Now, this hill is a pretty steep one. It’s not like Filbert Street, where someone always annotates the “HILL” sign with a spray painted “No shit” – the Filbert hill looks more like a wall than a hill, and is the steepest drive-able hill in the city (31.5 degrees – in other words, a rise of 31.5 feet in 100 feet)*. BTW, the city used to keep erasing the “No shit”, but they finally gave in and just leave it there. My tax dollars taking a nap. Anyway, this particular hill is not in the Filbert league, but it’s fairly steep, and just walking up it should be enough for anyone.

But not for my trainer.

For those of you who are uninitiated in the pay-per-torture that is the gym and live in blissful ignorance of what lunges are, they are a sort of very graceless forward-moving curtsey and hurt like hell. I find it bad enough doing them all the way across the gym floor and back, so doing them up this hill with the added refinement of 10 pound weights in each hand was a truly exquisite torture.

I had to stop halfway to try and catch my breath, which abandoned me in horror soon after the proceedings began and went to have a glass of wine at one of the caf?s. I pointed out to my trainer that she should ditch her job in favor of being a dominatrix. My reasons were and are that she would get paid a whole lot more for inflicting pain on people, and would get to wear cuter clothes, especially the shoes.

She got a little defensive at this suggestion and protested that she was helping people and making them feel good, and I said that was, as far as I know, the same deal with the other pain goddesses. So that gave her something to think about as she strolled beside me as I labored up the hill. And when I got to the top and looked back, I was inordinately pleased with myself. I think my trainer was, too, notwithstanding the dominatrix remark, because she kept telling people how “we” did lunges up the hill, and they were all suitably impressed. Later, she admitted that I did have a point about the shoes.

Who says the weather is a safe topic for conversation?

*PS: A reader informed me that I was actually wrong about this:

What you are really talking about is a hill with a grade of 31.5 PERCENT! 31.5 feet in 100 feet is side opposite over side adjacent or the tangent of . . .
31.5/100 = 0.315 = 17.48 degrees +-.

Thanks for letting me know! You had to know that was way beyond what little math comprehension I have.