Wake-Up Circuit

You may enjoy waking up at seven in the morning to go workout, but it’s not for me. On this morning, I opened the refrigerator and found some pizza. How many slices will remain unspecified. There might have been some cookies involved.

Have you ever journeyed to Dillon in the dark? Let me just say that Princeton becomes icy land where only maintenance workers and UPS mail carriers tread at this early hour.

The exercise room was filled with recruits, old and new. One woman of fifty with her hair a dyed electric blond whispered apologetically to me, “You are the first boy we have had in months. We had one long ago, but he left.” I could tell that she had been to this class many times before; she was an elite. The workout music blasted a 1970s power ballad, and she stretched into advanced poses that only the most skilled Circuit veterans could properly perform. She was right. The class was all-female. But, there was no need for the apology. I could get used to this.

As the morning sun rose and ballad after ballad played, the instructor, a flexible, fit woman with a commanding voice commenced the Circuit.

How that instructor could make a workout with a five-pound weight a physical challenge still remains a mystery, but somehow the five pounds felt like 50. As I lifted the weights up and down above my head, I could feel my frail arms shaking. Elite smiled. Next to me she energetically raised one weight and then the other. “Know your body’s limits,” chanted the singer on the radio. I glanced from left to right to check that no one was watching and I took a break. This would only be a minute.

The music changed. “You spin my head right round, right round,” Flo Rida sang. The instructor’s eyebrow lifted and, taken with the idea, she ordered our heads: “Spin them left, then right.”

My head was indeed spinning. I was already dizzy.

After the workout, we dropped to the floor for some yoga. My mentor, presumably not interested in such elementary exercises, left. The instructor sent us into child’s pose to relax. Instead of dreaming of a peaceful beach, I was already tasting the remaining piece of pizza waiting for me back in my room. The hour was up and Circuit concluded. I headed back through still-sleeping Princeton and, believe it or not, I was energized. Don’t tell anyone, but I was actually thinking about going back the next day.