Okay, so you walk into your gym and you see some program offered where there is alliteration involved � something involving words such as Butt Blaster or Ab Assault.

Flee.

For your life.

You know, sometimes I think that I am Wile E. Coyote and fitness is my Road Runner � a goal which seems so very attainable but somehow ends up in failure and pain. Today was no exception.

Now you would think that the whole Butt Blaster fiasco would have set me on my guard, but when the guy trainer asked me to come in to his Ab Assault class, did I do the sensible thing and sprint out of my gym screaming the words, "You'll never take me alive"?

No, no I did not. No, instead I grabbed a purple happy fun ball of pain, humiliation and torture and meekly followed him into the stretch room, along with a gaggle of zygotes.

Things got ugly fast.

The deal with the purple happy fun ball of pain, humiliation and torture is that it allows you to stretch your body in ways that are impossible on flat surfaces. Plus, the ball will roll, which allows all sorts of additional ways to torture your body through motion. As I found out. Quickly.

We did a bunch of standard crunches and leg lifts, things I've done at home on my own purple happy fun ball of pain, humiliation and torture. Hard, but do-able. I didn't realize it, but the trainer was only toying with us. Then he unleashed his dark side.

The move seemed simple enough. We were told to stretch out on our purple happy fun balls of pain, humiliation and torture in the position you'd use to start a push-up. Our bodies were to be parallel to the floor, the ball was to be under our thighs, our arms were straight down to the floor, providing balance. Then we were told to fold our legs up until our knees touched our chest, then straighten our legs back out again. Eight repetitions. The ball was to act as a sort of wheel under our legs as we did this.

The trainer made it look so very, very easy. He folded and unfolded his legs effortlessly in fluid motions. Nary a wobble.

My turn. When I got up on the purple happy fun ball of pain, humiliation and torture and slid upwards slightly to get my thighs over the ball, I got an inkling of just how much balance and co-ordination it would take to pull the move off.

Do I have a lot of balance and co-ordination? In a word, no. Tentatively, I began to draw my legs up. I managed to get my knees tucked up to my chest, but it was very, very slow and very, very wobbly. Then I had to get my legs straightened. I did it. Slightly better than the first move. By my fourth repetition I was feeling much less tentative.

That, of course, was my downfall.

I started to draw my knees up to my chest just a bit too quickly and I lost control of the move. With my legs semi-folded and moving upwards, there was no way to quickly drop my feet and regain my balance.

There is a character on the old tee vee show Laugh-In who used to tip over a tricycle with supernatural slowness. That is how I fell off that ball. It would have been exquisitely funny, except for one thing.

See, I had the presence of mind to roll as I fell so I would not hurt myself, but not the presence of mind to brake my roll. This meant I rolled into the woman in front of me who was precariously balanced on *her* ball.

Can you say "dominoes" boys and girls?

Of course you can.

She fell off her ball and hit the woman in the row ahead. People on either side of us, noticing that we were about to fall, tried to move out of our way and fell off *their* balls.

Because I was in the middle of the back row, I managed to take out eight of the nine women in the class. The trainer was laughing so hard I was afraid he might have a bladder malfunction. Fortunately, the rest of the women found it funny, too. No one seemed too upset and no one was hurt.

However, I noticed that after that I had a lot more room to work out in.

The rest of the class went without incident. When it was done, the trainer held me back and proceeded to demonstrate the leg curl move again with an amazing, effortless, fluid motion. How does he do that?

Obviously, the man has made a pact with the devil. It's the only logical explanation.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 746.87 miles.
Oh man. This is going to be hard
Goal for 2004: 1,000 miles - 1609 kilometers