Embarrassing episodes of a gym Virgin

With one month left of the summer holidays (sigh) and not very much to do in it, I decided something productive to do would be to get fit. Living really close to Virgin Active combined with no joining fee this month meant I didn’t really have an excuse not to join.

So Virgin Active is a pretty upscale place, and with me being the dopey idiot that I am, I had some not-so-great and potentially embarrassing moments which I thought I would share (let’s just keep in mind that I’ve never been to a gym before… and the school gym doesn’t count).

First off- the changing rooms. They are really nice, all wooden and spacious… I just wasn’t expecting so many naked women. It’s great that they are comfortable with their bodies and people around them, but it’s not really what I was expecting to see at 9am. And when they come up to have a chat to you...WHERE ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO LOOK?

 I absolutely hate running, so I thought I would go for a fast walk on the treadmill instead. I was told 1% gradient was the equivalent of walking on the ground. I thought ‘Pfft, I’ve climbed mountains, I can do better than a measly 1%’ stupidly cranking it up to 6%. ‘This is alright, I can cope with this’ slowly turned into ‘Ok- I might need to slow down a bit’ to full on panic as I flew off the back into a man happily going about his weightlifting. I just feel bad that I ruined his routine, he seemed like he was on a roll…

One of the coolest things about this gym is that they have machines which dry your swimming costumes for you! (I know it’s really sad of me to get excited about someone like that, but judging by the content of this post you can tell I’m a pretty sad person). The machine dries your costume, so naturally I attempted to put my towel in there. Now, a normal person would recognise that the towel is too big to fit in the hole, but nooo I persevered, shoving it in with as much strength as I could. Only when the lid wouldn’t close and I realised that there was a queue of people waiting behind me that I pulled it out and did the walk of shame, trying hard to avoid eye contact… more recently I realised the MASSIVE signboard that says ‘one swimming costume at a time’ which I probably should’ve read the first time.

 Another very cool thing about the gym (I am not sponsored by virgin active) is that they have a hydro-pool, which is basically like a Jacuzzi. After my long, hard workout I decided to relax in the bubbles. After a few minutes of unwinding, I was joined by a woman. As the jets are on a timed cycle, the bubbles stop at particular intervals. So I awkwardly sat there with this woman waiting for the jets to start up again. A few minutes of silence later, I hear ‘Are you going to turn the switch back on then?’  ‘Oh yeah, yeah, of course’ I replied meanwhile thinking ‘WHAT? THERE WAS A SWITCH ALL THIS TIME?’ I stabbed the button a few times but nothing happened- ‘I think the switch might be broken!’ The woman then had a go, and with one swift touch the jets were swirling again… not broken after all. Needless to say I wanted to dissolve in the water to save further humiliation.

So there are just a few of my embarrassing moments. I could go on for much longer (don’t even get me started about tennis), but I would be here for days and this post would be about 7 pages long. Like they say, you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs, so now I actually know what is going on, I should actually make the most of having a gym membership.