Weird but true

As you may or may not know, I am currently a graduate student at the University of New Hampshire, in the department of Kinesiology, studying Exercise Science. Yeah, it’s a mouthful, and no, I am not a glorified gym major. My coursework and research is more closely aligned with the biomedical sciences than PE. But, I still have to work in our Employee Fitness Center as a trainer/fitness staff.

I do not like working in gyms or fitness centers. I love coaching athletes and working with people to improve their health and wellbeing, but for the most part, I abhor gyms and the general commercial fitness center environment.

The UNH Employee Fitness Center, however, is very different. For one thing, it’s free to all full time benefits eligible employees. It’s only open during limited hours, so it’s pretty much just “regulars” who show up. I have actually grown quite fond of the people who frequent the establishment during my 11-1:30 weekday shift – so much, in fact, that I might just keep showing up to work after my semester requirements are done.

What I love about the place is the people – so unlike a traditional gym clientele. They are quite diverse and yet similar to each other in many ways. I’ve met some interesting people. I was blind sided one day when a client wandered up to me, asked “Are you Kerry?” and when I replied that I was, he said “I read your blog!”

It turns out that guy is another cyclist who got to my blog from Ryan Kelly’s blog and is now a regular fan. I even manged to convince him to come to the lab for a VO2 max test tomorrow night on his fancy new TT bike. What kinda freaks me out here is knowing that intelligent, highly educated UNH employees read Ryan Kelly’s Blog. I have new respect for academia.

There is a retired professor who is fascinated by motorcycles and upon hearing that Andy has an Aprilia has suggested that we get married in Italy and do a motorcycle tour of the Dolomites. He even offered to perform the ceremony because he is a Justice of the Peace. So, now I have the wedding plans nailed down. Yay.

I met a woman who is 4′10″ and specifically sought out my help to adjust the multi-hip machine because she figured I would be able to relate to being short. We bonded.

I met a 71 year old researcher and staff engineer who used to run the only hyperbaric chamber in New England. He told me stories about getting phone calls in the middle of the night to go in and set up the chamber to bring back victims of attempted suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning (apparently a hyperbaric chamber can redistribute the O2 into issues faster than traditional methods). He wants to go for a bike ride with me in the spring.

Today was yet another example of Things That Do Not Happen in Most Gyms.

A client approached me and asked who the current band playing on Pandora Radio was. He wanted to know if it was U2. I said no, it’s the Wallflowers, and before that was Coldplay, but three songs ago it was U2. He admitted he had not been there 3 songs ago and thus was not sure if he had heard the U2 song. He then explained that he wasn’t sure if he could identify U2. I asked why the sudden need to hear a U2 song, and he said “well, a friend of mine from Ireland had dinner with some guy the other night – Bono – apparently he is the singer of U2. I wasn’t sure if I knew who they were, so now I want to hear their music.”

Only in a University fitness center can you run across a person desperate to hear a U2 song because a colleague of his had dinner with Bono the other night.