One night stand

Most hotels nowadays have some sort of fitness facility. They range in size from “a rickety treadmill and two partially inflated exercise balls” to “a handful of various cardio machines and a set of mismatched free weights” to “a miniature health club with several machines, a spa and a trainer named Rick.”

For the past couple of months, I have been staying at a hotel with an above-average exercise room. There are no deep-tissue massages available post-workout, but as far as I can tell, all of the equipment was manufactured sometime in the last decade. There are three treadmills, two elliptical machines, a recumbent bike, a set of weights and medicine balls, and a rack of clean sweat towels (bonus!).

I’m staying in the middle of a very urban area, which means there aren’t many outdoor running options. (Unless your idea of a workout involves dodging the unsavory characters lurking in city bus stops.) As such, I have become somewhat of an early morning fixture in the hotel gym.

It’s not a bad place to get in a workout, especially if, like most hotel guests, you’re only in town for a couple of nights. The problem for extended-stayers like myself is that everyone else walks through the door knowing that they are probably not going to see you—or anyone else in there—ever again.

It’s kind of like going out in a city where nobody knows you—for one night, you can act like a total ass without having to worry about showing up in your boss’s Facebook feed the next morning. In a hotel gym, you can act like a total ass without having to worry about running into the stranger on the other treadmill at next week’s kickboxing orientation.

Once gym etiquette goes out the window, it’s total anarchy. In this dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself kind of atmosphere, you better snag the equipment you want the moment you see it open.

The way to do this, apparently, is to wipe your sweaty head with a fresh towel and then drape said towel over the piece(s) of equipment you wish to use later. That way, you can hop on the treadmill for another 30 minutes knowing that the 25-pound dumbbells will be waiting for you whenever you’re ready.

While you’re at it, it’s probably a good idea to reserve one of the two benches in the room using another rag soaked in your own perspiration—you know, just in case someone else is thinking about using it sometime in the next half-hour.

Oh, and heaven forbid that you screw up your circuit due to lack of floor space for your burpees. You should definitely go ahead and dibs some real estate using a stretching mat topped with—you guessed it—another damp sweat towel.

When you see another guest circling around “your” bench with a confused look on her face, it’s best to just stare straight ahead and pretend not to notice. She’ll go away eventually. And if she doesn’t, you can always play dumb. (“Oh, oops! I didn’t mean to leave that towel there. Silly me!”)

If she calls you a jerk and storms off, who cares? You’re checking out in 45 minutes, and you don’t plan on returning anytime soon.

Before you leave, though, you should stop by the front desk and lick every apple in the dish of complimentary fruit—just in case your plans change and you end up coming back later.

Say Yes to the Stress

After a long day at the office—because, you know, I have one of those now—there is no better way to relieve stress than heading to the gym for a little hardcore fitness action.

But I have to say, evening gym-goers are hella-intimidating compared to the mid-morning retiree crowd that I typically ran into back in my days of extended unemployment.

Everyone has just gotten off work, and by the time they make it to the gym, they’re tired, angry, starving and stressed. Their patience is wearing thin, which is why they generally employ a “wham, bam, thank you ma’am” style of working out.

So when you rack the bench press after your final set, they will not tolerate the seconds-long break you take before finally standing up and stripping your weights.

Also, no matter what machine they happen to be on, you can bet they are using it as a substitute stress ball. In my highly professional and scientifically-sound opinion, at least 95% of all user-inflicted damage to gym equipment occurs between the hours of 5 and 9 p.m.

The other day, for instance, I saw some guy throw—not just drop, but actually launch in a forward projectile motion—a 60-pound free weight dumbbell. As it smacked the ground and sent a palpable shockwave through the rubberized flooring, the guilty exerciser—a thirty-something behemoth with a shaved head and a dark, perfectly-manicured goatee—yelled, “Aaaaaaahhhhhhggggggggrrrrruuuuuuhhhhhhhmmmmmm!!!!”

I was the only other person in the room, which made for an instantly awkward situation. I couldn’t just pretend like nothing happened. This guy was obviously under extreme emotional duress.

I thought about casually walking up to him and saying something like, “Rough day at the office, huh?”

Ultimately, I decided that when it comes to stress-ridden ogres with goatees, any form of social interaction could be a real gamble. Instead, I hit him with an emotionally neutral look that said, “If you want to chuck weights around the room, go right ahead. I totally understand where you’re coming from, and I will make no attempt to stop you because you are uncommonly large and brutish.”

The abuse of gym equipment is not limited to weight stations—cardio machines are equally at risk.

On this same occasion, there was a middle-aged woman power-walking on the treadmill directly in front of the elliptical machine I was using. I peered over her shoulder and saw that she was watching an episode of Say Yes to the Dress.

I don’t know if it was a particularly intense episode or if she had other things on her mind, but either way, she was walking the hell out of that poor treadmill. She had the front handle bar in a white-knuckled death grip as she violently swiveled her hips from side to side and stomped her feet against the belt with each hostile step.

At first, I was totally annoyed. I had my iPod turned up as loud as it could go without causing serious hearing impairment, and I could still hear her cross-trainers slapping the platform. Eventually, though, I was able to sync my breathing pattern with the rhythm of her unnecessarily heavy foot strikes.

Our symbiotic exercise relationship lasted over thirty minutes. At the end, we were both more fit and less stressed. As an added bonus, I’m pretty sure Jennifer from New Jersey ended up finding her dream wedding gown.