New Year's Resolutions?

It’s 6:45 AM on Thursday, December 26^th and I’m laughing.  No, I’m not hysterical from being up so early.  I’m laughing because I’m in my spin class and it’s just the instructor Linda and myself.

This is not what the Thursday morning spin class at my gym usually looks like.  In fact, this isn’t what the entire gym usually looks like.  It is a ghost town today.  There is nobody on the treadmills, and I don’t think that the elliptical machines are even turned on.  A few of the usual muscle heads are walking around, but I’m pretty sure they live here in the back by the free weights.

What’s making me giggle is that I know full well this gym will be packed one week from today on January 2^nd.  Spin class will be standing room only, there will be a waiting line for the treadmills.  And as annoying as that will be, it won’t last.  Before Valentine’s Day, this place will be back to the regulars sprinkled with a random enthusiastic person here and there who stays less than a month and then disappears.

My good humor ends quickly when Linda says, “Well, Alison, since it’s just you and me and you’re very fit, let’s have a more advanced ride.”  In my mind I quickly curse out everyone who didn’t show up as I smile and say, “Sounds great!” and turn up the tension on my spin bike.

At a pause between songs, I pretend to towel off and drink water while in reality I am trying to stop breathing like a pervert on a crank call.  As I wait for my heart to slow down – either from the slower pace or cardiac arrest, whichever comes first – I think about why I’m the only one here.  I know why.  It’s because of New Year’s Resolutions.  If everyone is going to hunker down in a week, lose weight, go to the gym 9 times a day and get 3 promotions in the coming year, why bother working hard now?  Everyone is off having their last hurrah before they put their New Year’s Resolutions into action – for about a month.

Linda picks up the intensity again, and to ignore the pain in my quads I think about myself a few years ago.  I’ve made a million New Year’s Resolutions.  I’ve joined more gyms than I can remember, and stopped going to each one after a few weeks.  Skipping the gym always started innocently enough: I had a cold and was too sick, or I had an early morning meeting and I couldn’t be late.  Fair enough.  Then I would get to bed too late the night before and couldn’t get up the next morning.  Ok, that may have been my own fault, but it still felt like a reasonable reason for ditching the gym.  When I’d missed three workouts in a row, I’d come up with the thinnest of excuses: “Well, I can’t start up at the gym on a Thursday.  I’ll go back on Monday.” And before I knew it, it was Thanksgiving, which is an entire holiday dedicated to overindulging.  And with Hanukkah and New Year’s just around the corner, I might as well wait until the following year and make a new resolution.  And so on.

My triathlon partner Jeff and me at one of my 1st races

So, why did it stick this time?  Why am I voluntarily killing myself on a spin bike at 6:45 the day after Christmas?  It’s because I didn’t make a resolution this time.  When I started coming to this gym in 2010, I decided to make it a habit.  I wanted to do my first triathlon and needed a pool.  So, I told myself that I had to come to the gym every day so as not to make a fool out of myself in the triathlon.  I didn’t give myself any excuses or any way out.  I did that first triathlon in June of 2010, but I didn’t stop going to the gym.  I had made it a part of my life.

Do you ever wake up and think to yourself, “Hmm, should I go to work today?  Nah, I’ll skip it and go tomorrow”?  Umm, no (though we did all dream about that the day we bought a quick pick for the $580,000,000 that none of us won, damn it).  Of course not!  Getting up and going to work is just what we do.  It’s a part of us.  And for me, I get up at 4:00, swim a ½ mile and then almost die in a devious spin class.  That’s just what I do.

I have things about me I want to work on next year.  They’re personal, and definitely not funny enough to share in a blog and make it entertaining.  But, I’m not making a New Year’s resolution.  I want it to stick, so I’m going to try to make it a habit.  

I hope others are able to create new habits and make them stick,particularly some of the multitudes of people who will be in this spin class on January 2^nd.  I don’t think I can handle any more “advanced” rides with Linda.