Fitness kills

I was late to meet someone today. I apologized and before I could explain, he launched into an anti-fitness spiel, knowing that I was coming from the gym.

I’d heard it before. If you take all the hours you spend working out and deduct them from your lifespan, you lived less, not more. And, you’re risking premature joint damage and other ills, some of them fatal. Blah, blah, blah.

I could’ve made the argument for extended living. I might have trotted out the enhanced quality of life. Or countered with higher self esteem and brighter mental outlook. But, instead I ordered pizza.

He’s partly right. Fitness programs do put you at risk. But, it’s of death by pneumonia. I can prove that statistically.

I was late today because my workout was interrupted by a fire alarm. That propelled me, hot and sweaty, into the cold wind and rain, where I stomped my feet for 45 minutes. It took that long for them to ascertain that it was a false alarm. Not statistically significant? I beg to differ.

While I was stomping around and beating my arms in a futile attempt to maintain core temperature, I engaged in some calculations. This was the fourth time I had been driven outside by a fire alarm and two of them occurred at a gym during inclement weather. I’ll throw in a fifth. I had just returned to my motel room from a long run when we were evacuated into a snow storm because of a potential shootout between state troopers and bank robbers holed up in one of the rooms. That was a de facto workout.

So, 60% of the time I’ve been evacuated, it was in the pursuit of fitness. And 100% of those times, it was into adverse weather. Fitness kills by degrees (low and wet ones).