Train the trainer

I've been working out a little more lately. Yeah, I'm pretty awesome.

I started running about 6 weeks ago, and recently decided I needed to add some strength training to that. I am very gym-phobic, which is bad for someone who wants to add strength training. But I work at a college, which is good for the gym-phobic, because personal trainers cost $40 a semester.

My trainer is adorable. She's young and tiny. She dots her i's with circles. She wears sweatpants with things written on the butt. I try to get past these things, really, I do, because I know my dismissiveness is both harmful to the trainer-client relationship, and is also just a sign that the patriarchy is leaving its mark on me.

And yesterday, at our second session, I had gotten over them. We'd had a great workout; she's fun but also on top of things.

And she works in the evenings, which at a college gym in the summer is a boring time. Since she was bored, and since I irrationally love fitness tests, we decided to do a bunch of them yesterday. Including a skin-caliper test, which she was very excited about, because most people don't want to do them.

Afterward, we chatted about my body-fat percentage, and what a healthy percentage would be (25%), and what a really fit percentage would be, if I wanted to be more serious about my running (21-22%).

"But you don't want to go below 20%," she said. And I could hear her gearing up for the anorexia talk, which I was very pleased to hear her do, because I think that's just good responsible training. "Once you get to around 17%," she said, "you stop —"

And then she paused.

"I would normally talk about losing your period when your body fat gets too low," she said. "But at your age, I know, menopause..."

People?

I am 38 years old.

And yes, that makes me twice her age, literally. But come on.