Fear of committment

I received a wonderful compliment from Stephanie yesterday – she told me that she admires my committment to fitness.

This said during the same day that I a) had committment on my mind, (namely, people who commit to things and then disappoint) and b) started a new workout journey – boot camp classes at this fitness studio.

I have to confess: yesterday was tough for me.

Here’s the deal: Amazon local was running a special – $25 for a month of unlimited boot camp classes at Gunn’s. It sounded great, with one glitch – the best timing for the classes for my schedule would be to show up at 6 a.m., three days a week. I’m not exactly a “wake up before dawn to work out” kind of person. So much so that I have even run some of my marathon training runs (not the long ones, of course) during the heat of the day in the middle of summer. I call it “a good challenge” but really it’s “I’m too lazy to get up at 5 a.m.”

So, I wanted to do the deal. But I know myself and I know a month of waking up early would require something big. So I asked three of my favorite workout partners if they’d like to join me for a month of pre-dawn madness. Two of them politely declined, citing scheduling conflicts and a lack of desire. I totally respect that and was grateful for the directness. The third friend said he’d think about it, then hemmed and hawed about it for a few days. I got a slight impression I was being blown off, so I had actually written off the deal in my mind – I was ready to move on to something else, something that someone would want to do with me. Even bought a zoomba deal with Meghan.

But then my friend came back and said he was “in”.  What a surprise! I wasn’t going to tell him nevermind, as I felt that would be rude. So if he was in, I was in. So, a month of 6 a.m. workouts – I could do this. Knowing he’d be there with me, I could do this.

He had me sign us both up while he was on the phone with me, so I bought mine first, then his. And then something weird happened – moments after I told him the deal had been bought, he started backpedaling. Saying he really needed to figure out his workout schedule and it was only $25 and maybe he was just buying it to get me off his back, etc. I was confused – I actually wasn’t on his back about doing it at all – if anything, I was simply pushing him to give me a definitive answer.  But, I chose to ignore this red flag – surely he wouldn’t have us waste $50 if he didn’t have any intention of going, right?

Wrong.

In the days that followed, I tried to ask him when he wanted to start. I started getting nonanswers again. I had originally suggested February or March. I took a look at my schedule and realized if I planned my hot yoga classes right, I could actually start on Jan. 23. When I asked him about it … I got crickets chirping. Finally, after days of asking with no response, I got a “What happened to February or March?” I responded that I’d be happy to stick to our original plan if that works better for him, but I just needed an answer of some sort – so that I could plan my workout schedule around his (which I was happy to do.) Again, I got nothing. The absolute silence about the whole thing really hurt my feelings – he would respond if I would text him about other things, but would flat-out ignore me if I asked about boot camp. What I didn’t want was to push it off until February or March only to be blown off. But I also didn’t want to start without him on January 23 if he actually did intend to do it with me, because then I would be rude to him. I just needed to know one way or the other!

A few days ago, he finally confessed his real issue: he’d just decided to sign up for a running race that was requiring a lot training. The race was mid-February, and he just wasn’t sure he’d have time to do the boot camp before then. I took a look at his training schedule and agreed with him. I asked him if it would work better for him if we started boot camp in mid-February, after the race. Again, I got no real answer, just a bunch of hemming and hawing. He told me he was training for an even bigger race in April, so I knew even as I asked the question that if I was relying on him to show up with me, I would be sadly disappointed. The truth is, if he had just told me no at the beginning, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. Clearly, he should have just said no when I asked him the first time. And if he committed to me then he shouldn’t have committed to the race.

So I made one last-ditch effort: I asked him to contact Regina Gunn and ask her what she recommends. She works with runners all the time, so perhaps she’d have a suggestion for him – either “don’t do it at the same time” or “do it and I’ll cater your workout to your running schedule and make you an even better runner.” Either way, at least we’d have an answer – I was getting very frustrated by this point, as I was trying so hard to be flexible but I was feeling as if my time was being disrespected. He agreed to that and seemed happy with the solution. Finally, a conclusion.

When I texted him two days later on Friday (boot camp was to begin on Monday) to ask what Regina had said, I got a response of “I haven’t talked to anyone about anything.”

At that point, I was done. I love this friend dearly, he is one of my closest friends, but I will never again invite him to something that either a) someone else isn’t already doing with me or b) I’m not willing to do alone.

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I give you that rant not to call this friend out (Notice I didn’t use his name. And I have lots of runner friends so don’t even try to guess.), but to give you my frame of mind come Sunday night as I prepared for the first day, alone, of boot camp. I selected my clothes for the next day. I set up the coffeepot to go off at 4 a.m. I set my alarm for 4:30, 4:45, and 5 a.m. I typed the address into the GPS. It was a 30-minute drive from my house, so I allowed 40. There would be no traffic this early, and that would get me there 10 minutes early in case I needed to fill out paperwork. By 8:30 p.m. on Sunday night, I was relaxing with a glass of chamomile tea and an ambien, prepared for a good night’s sleep so that waking up early wouldn’t be so brutal.

Dragged myself out of bed around 4:50 a.m. Everything went as planned. I even got to watch 15 minutes of the news and sip my coffee before leaving at 5:20. As predicted, no traffic. I got over to Independence Boulevard, then hit a glitch. My GPS told me I was at the place, but I didn’t see it. Checked my phone directions and noticed it was sending me somewhere different. So, I followed the phone but it was confusing as it’s not turn-by-turn and it was really foggy out and I couldn’t see street signs. I ended up driving around for 30 minutes, lost. I finally realized the issue – I’d typed in the wrong street name to the car’s GPS. I had typed Independence Boulevard, not the correct Independence Pointe Parkway.  Pulled over and corrected address. Watched the time getting closer and closer to 6 a.m.

Finally got to Independence Pointe Parkway. It was 5:56. Just in time. Except, I still couldn’t find the place. Drove up and down the whole street, looking. I honestly thought about scrapping the whole thing and just going home. Frustration doesn’t even begin to describe how I was feeling. This whole thing had been a pain in my ass from the very beginning. But, at 6:01, I called the phone number on the web site to ask for directions. Turns out, there are two Independence Point Parkways. Uhm, ok … Of course, I was on the wrong one. She directed me to the correct one and I finally arrived at 6:15. I was late, and class had started, but Regina was awesome about sweeping me right in and getting me set up with a mat and some hand weights. I jumped right in as she called for us to do pushups.

For the next 45 minutes, I worked my ass off. I was trying to push it a little bit harder to make up for the 15 minutes I lost. Everyone else looked sweaty and tired before I even walked into the room, so it only seemed fair. One girl smiled at me as I walked in the door, making me feel welcome even as I was disrupting their workout. Everyone else seemed a little bit in their own world. Two girls sitting next to each other gave each other “five” a couple of times, and it made me wish I really wasn’t doing this alone. I can be chatty and tend to make friends easily but this was weird because they were already working out so it wasn’t as if I could turn to the guy sweating bullets and breathing heavy next to me and say, “So, been coming here long?”

So, class was good, but it was lonely.

I won’t say it was all bad, though. I had no less than 3 friends text me that morning and say “How was class? I can’t wait to hear all about it!” I gotta tell you, that feels pretty supportive.

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This post is getting way too long for me to even go into how I lost my purse after class and couldn’t pick up my prescription because my credit card and insurance card were in said purse, and that I wondered if I’d left it at home or at boot camp or dropped it in the parking lot on my rush to get in the door and ended up finding it stuck behind the glove box in which I’d thrown it in before class. I now have one disassembled glove box which I’ve chosen not to worry about at the moment.

I also won’t go into how my family has been dealing with some stuff that have required us to step up and help someone in need of us right now, but that’s also going on, and that took up several hours of my day yesterday. The great, great part about it was that I got to spend the day babysitting my nephews with my mom while my sister and dad and brother-in-law actually stepped up to do the actual burden. So I got lucky and got to spend the day with two of the handsomest gentlemen I know. But, as Mom put it when I told her about getting lost and losing my purse, “You’ve panicked enough for one day.” After babysitting, my plans were to go home, watch some shameful reality TV (The Bachelor, of course,) and go to bed early.

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But something kept nagging at me. There is yoga class at Gunn’s studio on Monday nights. I originally was thinking it was an either/or type of thing. No one goes to two classes a day, right? But as we were leaving class, she’d called out: “Remember, yoga tonight.”

That planted a seed. I actually texted my friend who’d bailed on me to see if he wanted to reconsider and hit up yoga. He had a work commitment so couldn’t. I mentioned it to my family and my dad said he’d take over babysitting duty with my mom if I wanted to head out to get to class. I texted Stacey to tell her I might go and she asked me to find out what it would cost for her to drop in on a class – she was interested to check out the yoga portion. She got me excited to try it myself so I could report back to her. Since class is only once a week, and my trial is only for 4 weeks, I couldn’t say no.

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And wow, I’m so glad I went. It was totally different than any other yoga class I’ve ever attended. Only 3 students there, including myself. One of them was the girl who’d smiled at me that morning as I walked in, and she turned out to be just as nice as her first impression. She even gave me some water – I’d consumed all mine on the way to class, assuming incorrectly there’d be a water fountain in which I could fill up when I got there.

 This was not the quiet, meditative yoga I’d been to in the past, nor the intense, crazy workout that hot yoga provides. This reminded me of four friends (including the teacher), hanging out in someone’s house saying “Hey, look what I can do” except one of us (the teacher) was the expert. I got lots of one-on-one instruction. I got a great workout and stretch. I got to meet three great people and hear about their days. And I was even able to do crow – first with the teacher’s help, and then on my own. Only for about 5 seconds but that’s the longest yet. And the atmosphere was so great that while I was in it I was able to say “Look, look, look I’m doing it!” and everyone in the room was super excited for me.

I texted Stacey right after, excited to tell her about it and told her she should consider coming to at least one class with me – per class, it’s insane ($20), but it might be worth it for the practice. Will only make us better at hot yoga, for sure. She was excited and said she’s going to plan to join me next Monday evening.

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Woke up this morning feeling sore all over, in the best possible way. This is going to be a good month. And the 4:30 a.m. wakeups? I got this, even if I have to go it alone.