I work out a lot. Well, not so much a lot but it seems that way when you engage in the activity daily. If you have read any previous entries, you know I was and still am on a streak of consecutive days after my gym had a 30-day challenge last year. If you are wondering, they did it again this year and of course I completed it. I had to as the Chicago Marathon has gone up in price and the month of saved dues will go a long way toward paying for a spot in the 2013 edition of the marathon.

One “drawback” of my constant working out is that every once in a while, I fail to listen to what my body needs and instead focus on what my head wants. Last night, I had one of those experiences where I really should have done what I needed instead of just going with the flow and what my head was thinking. To back track a bit, my gym lately has been giving out guest passes to us members to get us to bring in friends to maybe join us. Even more interesting, my gym called me up one day earlier this month to give me two one-week passes to bring my friends to work out with me. All because the membership crew heard I had been at the gym nearly every day. Additional background: I have a cold. Nothing to really stop me from doing anything, but enough to make me need to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n. This cold is the result of sitting across from a woman at work who is disgusting in that she REFUSES to cover her mouth when sneezing / coughing.

In any event, I finally found a friend who would join me. Initially I had planned to only take one spin class on Thursday. Normally on Thursdays, I take two classes of spin back-to-back. Because I can and it is a great way to push myself endurance-wise. The first class with Brady was fine. My friend who joined me in class did a great job of keeping up with us in class. I was really excited that she made it through her first spin class unscathed, that she had a great time AND will want to do it again.

The second class started out fine. The room was a bit warm, but that was because it got rather warm from the first class. For the first 40 minutes of class were fine. Then, with about 10 minutes left, I started to feel nauseous. It was soon after this point that we were about the enter the last portion of our ladder ride when Patti (instructor for class number two) asked us if we wanted to do sprints or these horrible hill things. I don’t remember the name of the hill things, but given how I was feeling i knew I did not want to do them. So since I said no on those (she gave us the choice / asked if we had a preference) we did sprints.

I somehow managed to make it through those sprints. Well, I kept riding, but not at a real sprint speed like I usually would. As we were starting to cool down, I was feeling even more eh, so I started to get off my bike. At this point, all I was thinking was that I just need to sit down. I managed to get off my bike and started drink some water.

The next thing I knew, Patti and several other people from class were standing over me. I had passed out. Miraculously, I did not hit anything on the way down to the floor and have no scratches, bruises, or bumps. Patti said it was the most graceful fall she had ever seen. In any event, I sat on the floor while everyone else finished with their stretching and finally after sitting for a bit was able to get up.

So what did I learn after my graceful fall and passing out? That I need to chill. And my gym has really awesome members, there are some good people in the world and I have fantastic friends. A lot of times when someone does what I did, most people just kind of stare for a moment and them continue about their business. No reason to involve themselves. Well, there was a really nice guy there named Elijah, who was riding on the bike behind me. He seemed really concerned that I was ok and even stayed after class when everyone else had left to make sure I was ok. Patti, of course, stayed as well, but I figured she would since we are friends. I really appreciated the concern and was partly surprised by it. In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have been surprised, but given the world I live in, I was incredibly surprised by Elijah’s actions and as I said, appreciative.

Generally, I enjoy people, but a lot of times, they also annoy me. There seems to be a lack of empathy these days for others. Everyone seems to be so self-absorbed that if a fellow person needed help, good luck finding it from someone else because we’re all too busy to give our time to others. Even if it is to ask “are you ok”? After last night, I kind of feel like there might be a few more people out there who are not completely self-absorbed. So, thank you Patti and Elijah for restoring some faith in humans for me last night.

I did go work out today, but I did a really easy workout. And tomorrow and the rest of the holiday weekend, I will be taking it easy. In other words, I’m doing what my body needs and not what my head thinks I need to do.

And how appropriate the first line in the song below is “it’s ok, I’m good” as after I was able to sit up, I was good after passing out 🙂