by Cassie Cole
I chuckled. Max had a dry, sarcastic sense of humor that was immediately appealing. “I bet you like to sit back here and look at everyone’ butts.”
He arched a golden eyebrow at me. “Is that why you’re back here, then?”
“Obviously. That, and I don’t want anyone watching my crappy form.”
“Too bad,” he said in a taunting tone. “I’m here now, and I’m going to study you like a chemistry book.” He began spinning while facing completely sideways at me, green eyes wide and goofy.
“Stop it! That’s creepy!”
The lights in the room dimmed, and the projector began playing the movie. It began by panning up to a massive New England mansion made of stone. The sound of whirring gears filled the room as everyone began spinning. Unlike the first time I had joined a spin class, this time I felt totally comfortable on the seat. The bike shorts really did make a massive difference.
Max leaned toward me and whispered, “The butler did it.”
“Hey! Spoilers!”
“I’m just guessing,” he replied. “But it’s always the butler.”
We watched a few minutes of the intro in silence. Max kept looking at me, but every time I glanced over he quickly returned his eyes to the movie screen. But he smiled widely to let me know he was messing with me.
I poked him in the arm. “I didn’t realize you were so vain.”
“Vain? Me?”
“Your wet hair. You took a shower before getting on a bike because you wanted to look good for everyone here.”
He snorted. “My hair’s wet because I was swimming.”
“Swimming, and then cycling?”
He bobbed his head in time with his pumping legs. “It’s called a brick workout. Back-to-back workouts with almost no rest in between. Standard triathlon training, to get your body used to transitioning from one exercise to another.”
I remembered him talking to Brody about the Alcatraz Triathlon, but I hadn’t realized he was a triathlete too. “Triathlons must be crazy. Running is tough enough, but to then go biking, and then swimming after that…”
“Technically, you swim first, then bike, then run last. But yeah, it’s a crazy hobby. I’m training for Kona.”
“Kona? Like the coffee?”
“Kona, in Hawaii, is where the Ironman World Championship is held. It’s like the Boston Marathon of triathlons.”
“How long is that? A couple of hours?”
Max’s chuckled. “A two-point-four mile swim, then a 112 mile bike ride, then a quick twenty-six-point-two marathon to finish it up.”
“What!” I gasped. “You’re joking. That must take you all day.”
He nodded. “Ironman races start at seven in the morning, and participants have until midnight to finish. I’m aiming for a nine hour finish time, though.”
I tried to imagine the distances in my head. It would be like swimming across all of downtown Denver, then biking to Wyoming and back, and then finishing it up by running all the way to Boulder.
“I used to swim when I was younger,” I told him as Daniel Craig’s character appeared on the screen. “Specialized in freestyle and butterfly.”
“Butterfly is incredibly difficult,” Max said, surprised. “Inefficient in terms of speed and energy usage, but a hell of a back workout. Why’d you stop?”
I shrugged. “I was a teenager, and didn’t like doing what my parents wanted me to do. And I started running cross-country instead when I got into high school.”
“You should pick it up again.”
I laughed. “My form is probably really bad.”
He leaned over until he was so close that I could smell his salty, masculine scent. “Let me tell you a secret. Being really bad at something is the first step to becoming really good at something. You have the platinum membership, right? Your personal training hours can be used with anyone, not just Finn. A few hours in the pool with me and your form will be flawless.”
I thought about that for a few cycles. “That’s tempting.”
“Mom always warned me about tempting the ladies with proper swim technique.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Maybe in a few weeks, after I’ve gotten into a groove. I don’t want to do too much too fast.”
“That’s probably not a bad idea,” he said with a sigh.
On the screen, Chris Evans appeared and did something suspicious. Max snorted confidently. “Told you the grandson did it.”
“What! You said it was the butler!”
He frowned in confusion. “I definitely said grandson.”
“You did not!”
“Agree to disagree.”
The woman in the next row turned around and shushed us.
Max and I smirked at each other like two teenagers flirting at the back of the class.
12
Katherine
One month.
I’d been going to the gym regularly for a full month!
I was in the back offices of RMF, sitting across from Finn. “Bear with me while I pull up your data on the system… Here we go. This monitor doesn’t swivel, so how about you move your chair over here?”
I scooched the chair around the desk until it was next to Finn. Our legs brushed together as I scrunched in close to look at the computer monitor.
“You visited the gym fifty-nine times in January!” he exclaimed. “Almost twice per day! You average ninety-four minutes per day as well. It looks like you’ve been utilizing the scales in the locker room. Your weight is down six pounds.”
I groaned. “Ugh, I thought I would’ve lost more than that by now!”
But Finn shook his head. “No way. Ideally, a person should lose about a pound per week. Any more than that and you’re losing muscle as well as fat. Six pounds is amazing, especially since we know it’s not just water weight. You’ve been crushing it, Kat.”
He high-fived me, and I felt all warm and tingly inside. In the last week he’d started calling me Kat, and it made me feel like we were even closer than before.
Finn switched to a new chart. “These are your exercises broken down by type. Cardio and resistance training, mostly, but there’s an hour of sports on here too.”
“The day I spent punching a speed bag.”
“Do you think you’ll keep that up in the next month?”
“Probably not,” I admitted. “It was a good way to burn off energy, but I like the other cardio better.”
“No problem. I’ll make a note of that in your report. How do you feel?”
“I feel great.”
“Energy levels are good? You’re not too fatigued?”
I shook my head. “I’ve been getting eight hours of sleep per night. The exercise has helped me fall asleep easier in the evening.”
“Right on.”
We went through some more graphs and charts. My average running speed on the treadmill was improving. So were my lifting gains in all the big movements: squat, deadlift, and bench press.
“I want to see you continue your progress across the board,” Finn told me. “We’ll continue our linear progression with the weights, but I want you to keep up the jogging as well. Nice and steady—nothing too fast. The speed will come with time. Alright, that’s it on my end. Are there any other areas you want to branch out into next month?”
“I like cycling,” I replied. “It’s easier on my knees than running. I want to do more of that. I also think I want to start swimming again.”
Finn bobbed his head. “Nice. Swimming rocks.”
“You don’t think it will interfere with the rest of my routines?”
“For most of my clients, I would warn against it,” he admitted. “But you’re far more motivated than the typical gym member. I think swimming should be fine, as long as you only do it on the days you’re not lifting. Go for it!”
I nodded to myself. That was what I was hoping he would say.
“Do you want me to schedule some swim lessons with Max?” he asked. “Remember, your persona
l training hours are transferable.”
I smirked at him. “I wouldn’t want to make you jealous.”
He let out a deep laugh. “If it were anyone else, maybe I’d get jealous. But Max is my bro. And he’s the best swimming and cycling instructor here.”
“Even better than you?”
That made him laugh even harder. “I don’t swim.”
“Why not? You just said swimming rocks!”
“It makes me feel like a literal rock. My body sinks in the water. I’m not very buoyant at all.”
I poked him in the bicep. “All this muscle is too heavy.”
He grinned widely at me. “You know it.”
We had become very comfortable with each other over the past month. Most of it was positive encouragement, but there was some friendly teasing thrown in now. It helped make the entire arrangement feel more casual, rather than an employee helping a customer.
That’s part of the reason I had continued going to RMF twice a day.
“I’ll pass on swim lessons, for now,” I said. “I want to start off doing it just myself, to see if I really want to get back into it.”
“Right on.” He patted me on the knee. “That’s about it, Kat. You’re a rockstar, and you’re only a few hundred points behind Brody. Keep it up!”
That afternoon, I took off work early and went to the store to buy a new swimsuit. The selection wasn’t very good—it was February in Colorado, after all—but I was able to find a few one-piece suits in my size. As I tried them on, I found myself admiring my body in the mirror more than worrying about how the suit fit. Even though I had only lost six pounds, I thought I looked great. Maybe it was just my imagination.
The next morning I showed up bright and early to make sure I had a pool lane all to myself. The pool room felt steamy compared to the rest of the gym, like I was walking into a sauna. Mist wafted off the surface of the pool, which was perfectly still and undisturbed. I was the first person here.
I sat on the edge of the pool to get acclimated to the water, and then hopped in. The water felt wonderful, especially since it was currently snowing outside. Much better than the chlorine-soaked pool I used as a child. I put on my swim cap, and then my goggles, which bathed the room in a bluish tint.
“Alright, Kat,” I said to myself. “Just like when you were a kid.”
I folded my knees, planted my feet against the slick pool wall, and then pushed off.
I started with freestyle, arm over arm with some gentle kicking. After a few strokes it felt natural, as if there wasn’t a fifteen year gap in my swimming résumé. I reached the end of the pool, pushed off the wall, and swam back the way I had come.
Breathing was the toughest part to remember. It was also the most important part to a swimmer, since oxygen was fuel for the body. Unlike a marathon runner, swimmers could only breathe at certain parts of the stroke, turning their head sideways to fill their lungs for a split second. I started off breathing every four strokes, the way I had done as a kid. Stroke with my left arm, stroke with my right arm, stroke with my left arm, and then turning my head to breathe on the fourth. That worked fine for the first two laps, but soon my chest was burning and my lungs craved air.
I switched to breathing every two strokes instead. I was just getting back into the swing of things. I didn’t need to be perfect, yet.
I completed four laps, a hundred meters, before I stopped to take a breather. As I held onto the edge of the pool and bobbed in the water, I couldn’t help but grin. It felt wonderful to be back in the water again!
My goggles were fogging up, so I took them off and rubbed my fingers against the plastic before putting them back on.
I did another hundred meters of freestyle, and then a hundred of breaststroke to switch things up. Frog-kicking was a good way to loosen up my legs. Then I switched back to freestyle and practiced my flip-turns, which were the most efficient way of turning around at each end of the pool.
While I was doing that, there was a bang as the door to the pool closed. As I turned my head to breathe, I was aware of someone walking on the other end of the pool, then stopping by the cubby holes to take off their shoes. The next time I turned to breathe, the person was spinning their arms in a circle to get loose.
By the time I finished my next hundred meters, the person was hopping into the lane next to me. I removed my foggy goggles and glanced at them as I hung onto the pool edge, then did a double-take. “Brody?”
He smiled politely while pulling a green swim cap over his blond hair. “I guess you figured out this is where some of the best points are, huh?”
“I was a swimmer when I was young,” I replied. “Not everything is about the points competition.”
He shrugged as if he disagreed. “If you were a swimmer, then you know the trick to de-fog a pair of goggles.”
“It’s been a long time since I swam,” I replied.
“Watch and learn.” He held his goggles in both hands and dipped them into the water. Then he pulled them out…
And spit in each eyepiece.
“Gross!”
“It’s the oldest trick in the book,” he said while rubbing his thumbs against the plastic. “And it works.”
“I’m not going to spit in the gym pool.”
He shrugged again, put on his goggles, and then pushed off the wall. I watched him glide through the water. He made it look so effortless, like he was meant to be in the water, as opposed to simply fighting it.
When he was down at the other end, I quickly spit in my goggles and rubbed my thumbs against the plastic, like he had done.
As I resumed swimming my laps, I was vaguely aware of Brody in the lane next to me. He mostly used his arms; his legs gently kicked in time, but not with any real power. I wondered if that was a triathlon technique. Max had said that swimming was the first part of a triathlon, so it might be ideal to save your legs for the bike and run.
We swam next to each other for ten minutes. I paused every hundred meters to catch my breath, but he churned through the water without stopping. On the screen on the wall, our points ticked up steadily… But his increased faster than mine.
25-29 AGE GROUP
BRODY F:_____4,622
JONNY K:_____4,239
KATHERINE D: 3,878
JAMES P:______3,410
I pushed off the wall with renewed motivation.
I was aware of Brody in the lane next to me, maybe twenty feet behind me and gaining. Every time I turned to breathe, his disturbance in the water was a little bit closer. It reminded me of swim meets as a child, competing with the people in the lanes next to me. The competitive part of my brain screamed at me, telling me not to let him pass.
As he swam alongside me, I increased my tempo. I pumped my arms harder, scooping the water down and back with each stroke.
We reached the opposite end of the pool. Both of us did an underwater flip-turn, and then shot back toward the start.
I moved my arms like I was fleeing a shark, and managed to stay neck-and-neck with Brody. My lungs burned. Soon, breathing every two strokes felt inadequate. I wanted to stop in the pool and raise my head above the water, sucking in a full breath of air. It felt like I was going to die. My arms grew heavier and heavier, like I was wearing lead armbands, but I was so close to the finish…
I finished my last stroke and stretched out to touch the wall. I turned my head underwater and saw him touch the wall too…
But I reached it a split second before him!
I gasped as I pulled my head above the water. It was only the last fifty meters of that set, but it felt like I had just swam across the English Channel.
Rather than continuing to swim, Brody stopped too. He smiled over at me and said, “I notice your goggles aren’t fogged.”
“Very funny,” I said in between breaths. “You’re just mad I beat you.”
“Mad?” He removed his goggles and cap, revealing his damp, blond hair. “That was great. It’s nice having someone to race aga
inst. You were pushing me to a strong finish.”
“I liked racing as a kid,” I said. “Deep down, I’m competitive.”
“I can tell.” He gestured up at the screen on the wall. “It’s been nice having someone on my ass in the points standings. I was tempted to be lazy and take the day off, but knowing that you were probably here? It pushed me to get out of bed and get my ass to the gym. So, thanks.”
At first I thought he was joking. He needed motivation to go to the gym? He practically lived here. He couldn’t be serious.
“Hey,” he suddenly said. His blue eyes glistened from the pool reflection. “I wanted to ask you something…”
I tensed. Was he going to ask me out? We’d chatted a few times over the last month, and there was once or twice where I felt like he was flirting with me, but it never turned into anything. Until now. The look in his eyes…
“What kind of shoes do you wear on the treadmill?” he suddenly asked. “They look like a zero-drop running shoe, but they have more cushion than I would have expected.”
“Oh. Um, they’re Mizuno Waves. I just bought them last week.”
“How do you like them?”
“They’re great,” I replied. “The guy at the running store analyzed my form and came up with the best shoe.”
“Nice, nice.” Brody nodded. “Alright, enjoy the rest of your workout.”
He climbed out of the pool, giving me a glimpse of his body. I already knew he was incredibly fit, but seeing it without any clothes was something else. He wore Speedo shorts, not the banana-hammock kind, but the kind which went halfway down his thighs. He had an eight-pack of abs, with zero fat covering them. Water ran down every crevice and ridge of the muscles in his chest and arms. He retrieved his towel from the cubby hole in the corner and dried off his hair, facing away from me. His butt was plump and muscular in the black Speedo. I couldn’t look away!
Until he turned to face me, and then I quickly averted my eyes. “See ya, Katherine.”
“Bye, Brody.”
I watched the marble statue of a man disappear into the men’s locker room.
