"Try-Athletes": Strip Club

I looked down, and there was blood everywhere... & I didn't know what to do.

Earlier...

I got to TriClub tonite and Brent had saved my bike, because of course, I was running late. I was so busy writing about my love of Louboutins that I barely had time to gulp down a spoonful of chicken pot pie before I could get dressed and drive to MacIsland. So I stuffed my feet into my shoes and chatted with Kirsten for a bit, as we both wondered where Lisa was, and then we hopped onto our bikes.

We started stretching and we were worried a bit about Brent because he was pretty quiet. It turned out he was feeling barfy, but at the time, we weren't sure if he was concentrating on rev'ing up for a big race or just ignoring us. We couldn't tell.

Holly asked where my partner in crime was... I told her "JENNY!" was on the East Coast, partying it up (with Marlene, no doubt... probably getting kicked out of WalMart or something. Marlene, if you are reading this, you better settle down!)

Before long, we were off to the races. We were working our butts off! Kirsten said she was itchy, right away. That's because the blood starts rushing to the top of her skin as soon as she starts working out. That's what makes her itchy, it has to be, plus all the sweat draining out of her pores.

She also looked like she went on a bit of an acid trip, because her eyes got kind of round and bright, so I guess things were alright on her end. She is doing well with the whole TriClub business.

We were doing one of our 'Stand up and sprint on gear 12' businesses when I looked down and noticed that my left hand was covered in blood.

And my world kind of stood still for a second.

I always wondered what I would do if something like this happened... if something totally odd happened at Spin/Swim, would you stop and take care of it? I wondered about vomiting, or falling off my bike but bleeding never crossed my mind.

"Nobody makes me bleed my own blood!" as Zoolander would say.

Seriously, though, I was bleeding.

I kind of stopped for a moment, then I put my hands back on the handlebars, then I kept pedaling.

And Kirsten said, "Oh my God, Terri, you're bleeding!"

"Yeah, I know. I wonder why I'm bleeding." Then I stopped pedaling again, and looked at my hand. I actually couldn't figure out why I was bleeding, where I was bleeding from, or when I had started bleeding. Most of the blood on my hand was dry.

Meanwhile, Holly kept the class up to speed, while my dazed and confused brain tried to figure out what to do.

I'm not afraid of blood. I could wade around in blood and not worry about it. I was dazed because I didn't know what to do about it - was I supposed to stop and clean my hand or just keep going and not interrupt the class?

What was the etiquette here?

If I was home, I would just go clean my hand, and get back on the bike. If I was at a friend's, I would do the same.

But I was at a class at MacIsland. Thank God there weren't a lot of people there. Kirsten said, "I have some hand sanitizer in my bag!"

Well, that made sense to me - keep the whole thing as quiet as possible. Plus, sanitizer kills germs. That would kill any germs on me and on the bike, right?

Never mind that I had a bottle of water and a face-cloth with me, right there ON THE BIKE.AS IN, RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME.

With a bloody left hand, I stared at Kirsten, and told her I couldn't touch her bag with a bloody hand, and she said, "Whatever, I probably have whatever you have, anyway!"

Fair enough - I got the hand sanitizer.

Hand sanitizer in an open cut hurts - a lot.

I have a big gouge in my finger. I don't know where it came from, only that it happened when I got on the bike. It took me a bit of time to clean it, too, using hand sanitizer and water. I biked for a long time afterward and I had to put pressure on that gouged finger to make it stop bleeding.

We checked afterwards but couldn't find anything on the bike that was sharp. Very, very strange. I had no idea that I could do that on a bike. In the 3 months I have been going there, I have never cut myself on a rubber handlebar of a Spin bike. First time for everything, I suppose.

Lesson: if something odd happens to you while on the bike, get off the bike and take care of business.

When I got back on the bike after all of that, I noticed that people were sweating profusely from the tough workout Holly was giving them. Well, I was sweating profusely, too, but that was mainly due to the hand sanitizer seeping into my blood stream. That stinging bit of pleasantry made me overheat just a little bit.

But it's all good. It kept me on my toes.

The other sweaty people started throwing off their clothes, though, so with all those clothes flying around, I felt like I was in the midst of strippers. Tri Club just turned into Strip Club! sTRIppers Gone Wild! I wanted to throw off all my clothes, too, because I was pretty hot, but I had nothing else to take off. If I took off anything else, it would have been a bad scene for everyone. The party would have stopped. I can just hear the sound the old record players used to make when the record ended and the little arm would come off the record to indicate that it was time to flip the record - game over.

Kirsten told me that she brought an extra pair of pants tonite just in case she ripped her first pair. You have to see K - she is a tiny little sprig of a girl, first of all, so I am not sure why she is worried about ripping the guts out of her pants. But sure enough, the extra pants were in the bag, along with the hand sanitizer. She said earlier, when she was getting ready, she had put on a pair of shorts for running, and the arse was ripped in them, so she didn't want to take any chances (there was no warning of not putting this in the blog, K, so I thought it was fair game :-P ). For the record, I don't know if she busted the arse out of the shorts while putting them on, or if it was a pre-bust kind of deal. Just sayin'.

:D

* I have a friend, who will remain unnamed, who just started a book-club and has left her very first book-club book in a bar. She didn't read it yet, just accidently (?) left it there. I think that is priceless. That actually makes me happy, even though I am not sure why - I think it is the humour of the situation - there are too many grave things in this world... let's lighten up a bit.

I'm selling all my books tomorrow, in fact. I don't read them anymore... time to pass them on. That's how I'm lightening up... I've figured out what I want to do, and what my short term plans are.

-> making better meal plans - in progress

-> walking Harley everyday - in progress

-> de-hoarding the house - in progress

-> finishing the show - in progress

-> making a plan to get on my feet for running - in progress

I started researching a lot of stuff for running. It's going to be a slow process for me. There is a lot of info out there about running - it's not just: start running & it'll work itself out... I'm already making mistakes and I've only ran a few laps. No wonder I'm hurting myself. I'm doing it wrong. Yeah, you can run wrong. Some stuff I'm doing right - like, I run with a midstrike / frontstrike - I don't hit with my heels, which is good... but I have always been better barefeet, so I might do better if I had minimalist shoes rather than the ones I bought, the strong support ones, which is what I thought I needed. We'll see about it.

I'm going to buy another bike for this summer so I can do some regular biking around town. It won't be TriClub biking - those guys are too hardcore for me, yet. But I'll keep up the Spin class stuff and probably join a yoga class. Maybe I'll join a 'Learn to Run' class.

Yeah, I know what I am doing.