I did eight machines for months, kept track, and set a personal record for circuit training on eight machines in March, 2011. By July, 2011, I could barely finish any machines, much less set a personal record. In July, my mother was in her last hospital stay, returned home to around-the-clock care, and died August 27, 2011. My grandmother died on December 13, 2011, closing what I experienced as a very hard five years.
When I was still in Tampa in 2006, getting ready to move back to my hometown of Blacksburg, Virginia, I looked at the pictures of the personal trainers at The Weight Club, and selected Don Belote to contact because of his personal fitness, credentials, and apparent life experience. In July, 2011, I had worked weekly with Don for 5 years.
A new instructor at The Weight Club passed me while I was working on a machine with Don the other day and said teasingly, "Isn't it amazing how trainers get to stand around all day?"
I kept lifting, but was dumbfounded. Stand around? Was she crazy? What about the breadth and depth of his musculature spoke anything of "standing around"? "Do you know how many times this guy has saved my life?!" I wanted to shout at her.
Yesterday, on January 7, 2012, with the supervision of Don Belote, although I did a one-mile warm-up, not a two-mile, and it took 57 minutes, not near a PR, after everything that's gone down, I did eight machines again for the first time in 5 months. I thought I was down for good. I don't quite feel the song. But I can feel that I might feel it again. Someday.
