I’ve been waiting to write this blog since 5:45 a.m. (it’s now 9:01). I decided to start today’s gym session with a few minutes in the sauna as my quads are sorer than sore from running. I usually sit in the same spot but today I decided to sit there, then scoot over so I could lay out on the bench. Not only did I burn my ass when scooting, but I got caught on a loose sliver of the bench resulting in pulling a big chunk of the bench with me on the scoot and said big chunk impaling into my left butt cheek. OUCH! I couldn’t believe it. I stood up (thankfully I was the only one in there) and began pulling piece after piece out of my butt before realizing the biggest one was all up in there. As I reached in my pants to get it out, I removed my hand and saw that it was splattered with blood. More ouch! I walked out of the sauna to further investigate and was three seconds short of being caught with my pants down in front of the gym mirror staring at my ass. I cleaned up my mess, which included a giant blood stain on my pants in a place that could be confused for a girl who leaked on menstruation. On top of that, I now had a tiny hole in the butt of my $60 Nike pants. This morning started as a fail of epic proportions.
I had arrived at the gym no fewer than eight minutes ago. There was NO way I could just walk back out without feeling like someone would notice. PLUS, I did not wake my now-sore happy ass up at 5:15 in the morning just to turn around and drive back home. As I had spent the first 60 seconds in the sauna determining my work out strategy for the day, I now had to rethink squats and dead lifts to avoid the risk of someone noticing the blood stains when I bent over.
I walked upstairs to spend a longer-than-usual time on the bike because it seemed like a safe strategy and I could hide in a corner of my own embarrassment. When I decided it was time to move on, I got up from the bike, ass extremely sore, tucked my sweat towel in the back of my pants and tried to pull off some cool swagger look — realistically, no one probably noticed my incident or my swagger. I continued to the rower and any other machine that would allow me to sit in my shame. After 50 minutes, I was done.
When I got home, I was finally able to get a good look at my backside (it’s really hard to do so when you’re in a nervous frenzy and in a public space). I was probably in my head about the hole and the blood WAY more than I should have been. Thankfully I only have a small cut, and even more thankfully, I got my tetanus shot updated within the last year.
Sara and Her Soles 