The thing I love best about my trainer is that I can be completely honest with her. If I'm having a grumpy day I don't hide it. She knows the signs, ignores me until the happy workout endorphins kick in and the worst of the surliness passes. Saves us both a lot of grief.

Well, my trainer married her Romeo on the weekend and they're off on some sort of freakish hiking/ backpacking/ canoeing honeymoon for this week. I know. I'm as appalled by this as you are. Whatever happened to honeymooning on some beach somewhere and eating your weight in shrimp daily? Huh? HUH?

The other trainer I like, well his wife had a baby on Monday so he's taking this week off as well.

Even worse, my three favourite workout buddies are also on vacation.

Abandoned. I have been abandoned.

Wait. It gets worse. They have brought in the alarmingly perky evening aerobics trainer to fill in for my trainer. Which inevitably leads us to the question: What is it that I have done in this or past lives that merits this kind of cosmic abuse? Huh? HUH?

I must have been some sort of serial killer. Really, it's the only logical explanation.

Now I know this woman means well. And I suppose that if you're trying to inspire people in the evening to new heights of energetic movement, well, you probably have to pump up the perky. But when I drag my aged carcass through the door of my gym early Wednesday morning, doing my best to psyche myself up to 30 minutes of the pure hellacious torture that is the Stairmaster, I do not want some spandex clad pixie chirping inane fitness clich�s at me.

Just let me sign in, get to my locker, pull on my ratty gym clothes, charge up my water bottle and slap on the MP3 player. Do not stand between me and my mission. Let me get the hard part over and once I'm riding an endorphin high I will be a whole other person. Promise.

I thought we had negotiated this on Monday when I gently explained to her that I'm not particularly sociable some mornings but feel a whole lot kinder once I've done my half hour of cardio. Well, apparently the message didn't register because I got hit with a near atomic blast of perky on the way to the locker room. It took all my self-control not to bean her with a medicine ball. Clearly, the woman has a death wish.

I desperately, desperately miss my trainer and my workout buddies.

Over the last three years I've dropped 40 pounds, taken my resting heart rate down to 55 bpm, my blood pressure to low end of normal and increased strength and flexibility exponentially.

This week I've come to realize that a lot of the credit for that has to go to the people around me. My trainer mentors me and gives me such an extraordinary example in how she lives her life. The goals she sets for me are her own personal goals. They are not about some sort of ideal weight or perfect body, they are about being strong and fit, about permanent, workable change.

While she stresses eating properly, she refuses to demonize food and she doesn't believe in dieting. A diet implies a short term change; she believes in making gradual changes you stick with for life.

The guys are my comic relief. They constantly tease me. They don't let me back down from my program and they will heckle me into those final repetitions I so do not want to do. To maintain cred with them, I push myself harder than I ever would on my own. I'm finding that out this week as I try to run purely on my own inner resources.

Man, am I finding that out.

Everyone will be back on Monday. I will pretend that I didn't miss them a bit, of course, because after all I am Marn, Warrior Princess, the woman who squats her body weight.

But I do miss them. I miss them all terribly.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 624.55 miles. .
Oh man. This is going to be hard
Goal for 2004: 1,000 miles - 1609 kilometers