Saturday, January 4, 2020

Blackout Workout

It took a long time for those huge halogen lights hanging from the rafters in the gym to come back on after we were plunged into darkness for a minute or two. I was happily (okay, begrudgingly) jogging along on the treadmill when everything went dark. My machine stopped, but since my music kept going, it took me a minute to put all the details together and realize that it was a power outage. By the time I tapped the pause button on my phone and removed those new wireless earbuds, the big TV screens on the wall were coming back on, but all 6 of them were filled with snow. The exercise equipment blinked once and then twice, and then invited me to begin my workout, but I declined for the moment, instead trying to figure out what the protocol was. The weight area was completely dark, and the lifters were filing up to the dim emergency lit area by the front desk. The studio was very dark also, and Heidi was in there jumping rope, so I went to check on her. She was happily skipping away, no illumination necessary. I wandered back out to the main machine zone, where by now most folks had resumed their running, walking, stair-stepping, and crosstreking, eerie shadows in the gloom. As for me? The aerobic portion of my workout was over, but a little dark weight training sounded good, so I stuffed my earbuds back in and walked into the shadows cast by the faint glow of the slowly reviving overhead lights.

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