45lb Plate

One of the original things that inspired me to blog post was almost 2 years ago, I was running and an idiot shouted something out of a window at me in his car. (click here if you want to re-read Hate at 35mph) I've been thinking about that a lot this week after my workout on Tuesday.  Despite the snow situation here in Omaha I went and worked out on Tuesday after work. Ok, full disclosure my very nice gym is in my condo building and although I had to go outside, I didn't have to set foot in snow or move out from under our awning, so not that much  of a miracle to go work out. 

My gym is like so many small gyms out there, it's got the normal machines and weights and then what my friend Heather and I call the "boy" section of the gym, the more intimidating free weights and plated machine part of the gym.  Well that’s where my trainer wants me to work out so I do it, again there is a countdown to October 1 coming up after all!

On Tuesday these to gentlemen were screwing around with a Hammer shoulder press machine I wanted to use so I moved on to something else, keeping an eye on my machine.  Finally I thought they were done so I moved the 45lb plate down on one side and was moving to the other side for my turn on the shoulder press.  One of the men interrupted me with sorry, we aren't done. I apologized and put the 45lb weight back on the machine.  He stopped, and said: Girl, did you really just throw that 45lb weight around like it weighed nothing?  I laughed and told him that it takes strength to be me. He said: throwing that around like that just made me look like a pussy. I laughed again and moved to another machine.

I caught him watching me a couple of times when I was on a few other machines, it felt like he was taking measure of me, was I really as strong as I said.  I was flattered and just laughed when he was watching me. Hell yea I'm that strong.  Hell yea I do work out on this side.  I saw him a few other times last week and he always gave me a nod.  It's funny thinking about both situations, the jackass who yelled out a window and the fellow gym goer and his respect.  He will never know how much his comment meant to me, he will never know how much taller I stood or how much more I felt like I fit in at the gym thanks to him.

I hope I see him again this week, I hope he sees that I may be slower or not a super model but I'm there day after day doing my best.  I hope that I can see that in me too, that I'm doing my best.  That's all anyone can do-whatever their best may be-what more could we want?