The Gym Curse

I know the year is still new. I know I promised myself that I would be positive. I know that I vowed to whine and complain less. But I'm completely convinced that I have a gym curse. I loveeeee the gym. I used to hate exercise when I was young but I started working out about two years ago and I've found a lot of joy in it. And by exercise, I mean running because that's pretty much the only thing I do at the gym. I love the treadmill so much that once I start running it's pretty hard to detach myself away from it.

Anyway, I go to a certain 24 Hour Fitness near my house and I like that gym in general. It's pretty clean and not too crowded and people are decent for the most part. However, more often than not I encounter strangeeeee people running next to me. One time, two women who couldn't find adjacent treadmills so they decided to get on the treadmills on my left and on my right. They then proceeded to lean towards each other and talk OVER ME in VERY LOUD voices. GOOD LORD. I wanted to shoot myself. I was so thankful for my Ipod and so thankful that they only "worked out" for about 5 minutes. Those are the kind of strange people that I encounter at my gym.

My unpleasant experience at the gym today involves the curse of smells. The first girl who got on the treadmill next to me emitted an unbelievably strong odor of onions and some other spices. The weirder part is that I would only smell it every so often which made me assume that the odor came in a gaseous form (yikes!). Needless to say, I was quite relieved when she finished her workout. Unfortunately, the next girl was so much worse that I was secretly praying for the onion girl to come back. This new girl must have bathed in a tub of disgusting cheap perfume. It was so strong that I began breathing only through my mouth and eventually tried to stop breathing in general. I'm one of those stubborn people that never wants to stop once they start running so I was running and holding my breath, a method of working out that no one should ever try. After a while, I felt lightheaded and started breathing again but the stuffy cloud of perfume only made me feel suffocated. I always enjoy working out but it was almost too painful today. No one I know seems to have strange gym stories except for me.


Am I the only one with a gym curse?