Tales from the gym

It was a dark and stormy Monday morning...

Normally I'll run in the rain as long as it's not thundering and lightning but it looked really miserable out so I decided to cash in one of my "Get out of Running Outside Free" cards and hit the gym for a spin on the treadmill.

I had planned to do a 4x800m speed workout, and I figured that would be easy enough to transfer over to the treadmill.  Just run 4x:3:30 at a pace that makes me feel like I'm almostbutnotquite going to hurl.  I warmed up for a couple miles and cranked up the pace.

Repeat 1: I'm out of shape!.
Repeat 2: Not soooo bad.  I slowed the pace a tiny bit so I wouldn't actually hurl on the treadmill and get banned from the gym for life.
Repeat 3: Okay, I can do this...

ERRRRRRRRRRRRP. (That's the sound of a record stopping).

1:30 into my third interval, the treadmill came to a halt, the gym went pitch black, and the fire alarm started sounding.  Remember that it was pouring outside?  This was either a malicious fire drill or... the building might actually be on fire.

I grabbed my water bottle and watch and hurried outside where the gym patrons huddled by the front of the building, trying not to get too cold and wet and trusting that we would *probably* be able to tell if the building was actually on fire so we could run away.  There was no fire truck outside, which is usually present when they do fire drill,s and one didn't arrive while we were waiting which would happen- presumably- if there was an actual fire.

We stood around for about 15 minutes before an employee came out to say that the power had gone out to a bunch of buildings in the area and that we could go in and get our stuff but do nothing else.  No shower.  No nothing.  So I ran in and grabbed my bag, and headed for the bus stop to go home, shower, and try to make it to work at a reasonable time.

I waited FOREVER for the bus and breathed a sigh of relief (but not too deep because the bus smelled like smoke) when I got on and headed home.  Until we came to one of the large parking lots and the bus stopped for the driver to take a smoke break.  I decided that I wasn't *that* far from home and would at least get a little more exercise by walking the rest of the way.  The wind was still blowing hard but it had downgraded from pouring to raining and I was already soaked at this point so I remained in drowned rat status for another 1.5 miles to get home.  So much for staying out of the weather!

Then a brief but wonderful hot shower.

Back on the bus.  Back out in the rain to my building.  Only 30 minutes late to work.  Fortunately(?) my boss also lost power at his house and couldn't get his car out of the garage so he was later than me.

Whew.  Way too much excitement for a Monday morning!