Sweating out lives together at the gym

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By SANDRA THOMPSON

© St. Petersburg Times,
published July 7, 2001

Fourth of July at 9 a.m. the streets were empty, but Shapes on Swann Avenue was full. Women were walking and running on the treadmills, pumping on the ellipticals and an aerobics class in session was bumper-to-bumper steps.

A holiday is a great time to work out for women who work, but they weren't the only ones there. I saw one of the during-the-week regulars, a woman I've talked to while walking next to her on the treadmill. She keeps a brisk pace, brisker than mine I am sorry to say, and she's 84. She's a regular in the Tuesday-Thursday Lite Aerobics class taught by Susan Egelseer, who is a veritable icon to these women. Including the oldest, who, at 87, may appear for class in a shiny turquoise tights and matching top, a gold loop belt cinched at her waist.

"You're what keeps me going," she tells Susan. Friends her age can no longer walk. She and her husband also belong to Bally where they walk the track.

She is an inspiration to all of us who want not to live forever but to keep moving as long as we can.

But, for women anyway, a gym is not just about working out.

It's also a place of sustaining social support.

You see the same faces -- and bodies -- all the time, usually without make-up in crummy workout clothes. We tend to be honest and open under such circumstances. We may not know each other's names, but we'll talk frankly about things like weight and health and husbands. About our fears for our children, what's on sale at the mall, what we think of Martha Stewart, when her show -- the sound blanked out, thank God -- appeared on the TV screens in the cardio room.

On the treadmill we talk to the woman next to us, because it makes the time go faster. Now that there are so many treadmills, we may never be positioned next to that person again. But from women whose first names I don't even know, I've learned what it's like to be a nurse, a doctor in today's HMO climate, a widow, a retiree taking full-time care of a grandchild. Overhearing the screaming cell phone conversation of a young woman running at breakneck speed I learned -- or rather, remembered -- what's it's like to be in love with a jerk.

A gym can be a refuge. You can go almost any time and there's always someone there. One recent Saturday early evening (a fluke because I always work out in the morning), it reminded me of the college dorm on Saturday nights. The women there were the ones who didn't have dates, but they had each other. One young woman lifting arm weights talked excitedly to another about being on the Internet till 4 that morning. I was glad that tonight she was talking to a real live person instead.

The older women, regulars who come early in the morning to move about (not swim) in the pool and whirlpool to ease their arthritis, talk about their medical conditions, their husbands' health, their families. Young married women in the tough morning aerobics classes talk about their children's schools, their houses, their hectic lives. Women who rush in at lunch with only an hour to work out and get in and out of pantyhose talk about the office and their ex-husbands.

I've been working out, in one form or another, since I was 23. I've belonged to Shapes -- formerly Mademoiselle, formerly Louisa -- for nearly 20 years.

Sometimes close relationships will develop. I met my best friend in St. Petersburg at Dancemakers, where we took classes 20 years ago. In New York, during my divorce, my young daughter and I stayed for a while with a woman I'd become friends with in the Pepto-Bismol pink exercise room at a Brooklyn gym. And when my husband went into the hospital for surgery last year, it was a Shapes treadmill mate who sat with me in the OR waiting room.

This is all a bonus, of course, but a healthy one, not included in the price of the club or studio.

- Sandra Thompson is a writer living in Tampa. She can be reached at Tampa@sptimes.com. City Life appears on Saturday.

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