I initially titled this entry “Who are you and what have you done with Greg Berg?” but that wouldn’t fit on one line, unless I removed the spaces between the words, which looked a little too strange. But it felt like a good headline because I’m going to be sharing something so incredibly unlikely for Greg Berg to say that you might be inclined to think that someone has kidnapped me and is writing bogus blog entries in my place. The line itself, by the way, actually springs from one of my favorite Marshall stories. He was riding around Decorah many years ago with his good friend Francesca Reyes, and for some reason she asked him about Joan Sutherland’s recording of Gounod’s opera Faust. (Fran was maybe learning one of the arias.) Marshall, one of the all-time great Joan Sutherland fans, said something about how she really didn’t sound all that good on that particular recording, which is just about the last words you would have ever expected to emerge from his lips. Francesca recoiled from him with a horrified look on her face and spat out “Who are you and what have you done with Marshall?!?!?!” We still laugh about that, all these years later.
Anyway, what I’m about to say is going to sound nearly as outrageous as Marshall criticizing a Joan Sutherland recording, but here it is. . .
I miss being on the treadmill at Razor Sharp.
(I should have warned you to have your smelling salts handy, just in case you fainted from the shock.)
Life has been really crazy since I returned from Nashville, and I have been to Razor Sharp exactly once in the last week and a half. That might not seem like a stop-the- presses news flash to you, but it’s incredible to me that an avowed couch potato like me has actually come to enjoy my time on the treadmill and feel strange and unhappy when I go too long without it. Maybe a sliver of my regret has to do with the money we are spending on our membership there and that even when I get there every other day we are probably not getting our full money’s worth out of the place. But it’s a lot more than that. Though I can scarcely believe it, I have come to enjoy the feeling of being on that treadmill- of working up a sweat – of getting my pulse up into triple digits – and of doing something on behalf of this dumpy little body of mine which I have neglected terribly for so long. And I’ve done it enough over the last couple of months that it is becoming my New Normal – and it actually feels Abnormal when I can’t do it for whatever reason. And for me to be thinking about exercise in this way is absolutely astounding. It’s almost like I’m in that Flintstones episode where Fred Flintstone gets hit on the head by a bowling ball and is utterly transformed into this really elegant, snooty guy who wants to be called “Frederick.” I’m pretty sure no bowling balls have fallen on me as of late, but my new-found affection for the treadmill is no less strange than Fred Flintstone becoming Frederick. Go figure.
And by the way, my thing for the treadmill doesn’t really have anything to do with weight loss as such. I have found myself pretty much stuck at a plateau of 227 pounds for several weeks now . . . and have come to accept that this may be where I’m going to ultimately settle. That’s okay- it still marks a weight loss of about 45 pounds since late January- and more important than that, there is so much more spring in my step than there was before. And if I’m stuck at 227, I’m pretty sure that those 227 pounds at least are becoming a lot less “jiggly” and a bit more solid.
I should also say that I have managed to play some spirited tennis matches over the last ten days- – – three matches with Dave Krueger – – – and although I haven’t won any of them, with each one I am managing to embarrass myself less and less and putting up more of a fight. So that’s good. And when I’m playing Dave, I do my best to keep myself moving- I try to run after stray balls rather than loping over to them at a leisurely pace, and I try to run down every passing attempt and drop shot, even if I’m several steps short of the mark. It’s not quite a complete substitute for an hour on the treadmill, but at least it gets me breathing deeply and out in the sunshine and feeling glad to be alive.
By the way, the musical is giving me at least a bit of a workout as well . . . (Sondheim’s music is really taxing for his pianists) . . . but not as much as my wife, Kathy, and her castmates. They really get to do some moving around, sometimes in rather intricate dance moves while still trying to sing the complicated songs of Sondheim – and God bless them, they’re managing to do it so well. It’s funny how sometimes life itself and its opportunities have a way of getting us off of our butts and on the treadmill, figuratively if not literally, if we’re willing.
pictured: one of the treadmills at Razor Sharp- which thanks to all of its sophisticated digital displays feels more like a jet cockpit than a piece of exercise equipment.