You're enjoying your holidays out of town, staying in this cool apartment in Philadelphia with your girlfriend and you want to work out. You are not close to CMU nor Skibo and you can't access UPenn gyms because they're closed and well, because you're from CMU.
The day after Xmas you wake up tired as shit and feeling dizzy, you get up from bed just to run to the bathroom and spend there the whole day. Was it Christmas dinner or the chinese food from the day before? It doesn't matter, 'cuz whatever it was it's all out of your body, or at least it should after so much puking.
4 days later you are smiling when you're finally able to get out of your bed and do your first morning run of the season. After a couple of minutes running to a random direction you find an awesome scaffolding structure just near some small walls, so you can start doing all those conditioning exercises that you love, but when you go to the crew's google doc to log your happy workout you feel lame and you wish you had access to an erg.
Then, the day after your right lower back starts aching as if you had been stabbed or as if someone had used you as the tractor tire with one of the sledgehammers, so you think you could use some rest, even though you have been resting the whole week.
You do some yoga following Lee's printouts and the pain is eased, but after waking up the next day the pain has now spread to your whole lower back, and you can hear the printouts laughing at you. Now you start hating Swinslow.
So, another day of just sitting, stretching, massaging and yoga-ing. You also do some static abs because you read somewhere in the printouts that lower back pain can be because weak abs, it kind of work, but you still hate the process of standing up.
Two days later you're almost going back to sunny Pittsburgh, so you think "fuck it" and you go out for a walk and some fun with the scaffoldings so your name wouldn't be the lamest on the google doc, but it's 16° outside, so you can stay outside just for so much until your hands are frozen from the scaffolding so you go back with your tail between your legs. You realize you'll be able to work out the way you like only when you go back to CMU and the warmth of Skibo next week, so you just give up on trying. Breakfast time.
You go back to the cool apartment building and remember that sometime in the past your girlfriend told you about the pool on the roof and you've never been there, so you think it's a good idea going up to know the place. You go out of the lift and see a mini pool full with elder folks having some fun in the sun, so you turn yourself back to the lift but just before going in it you look left and you find yourself with an awesome gym fully equipped and with an erg looking at the best view of the city you've found so far. It's old, the display doesn't work and the chain is sloppy, but hey, it's an erg and the sit still rolls, so you sit, do a couple of strokes and feel how your lower back says "thank you" with a tear in its eye. The guy in the treadmill turns his head as he had never heard that swooshing sound before, you know you're in the right place.
Why didn't I think about the pool before? Classic.
Time to start logging in some miles.
