Richard Simmons and My Gym Buddies Would Be Friends

I currently work out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at my gym. This is not unusual. 

What is unusual is that I have a team of coaches...you might call them my personal trainer team.

They are a group of women, age fifty and older, who kick my butt each morning with their seriously intense 4x6 index card workouts. 

We met in a team fitness class. I was the youngest woman in the class by at least two and a half decades. The class was great, but I was paying with my sign-up bonus points, and the day they ran out, so did I. 

I had been working out on my own, saying hi to them from afar, but a month ago, the three of them decided they could do it on their own, and they invited me along. 

My personal trainer team consists of : 

Lisa, who is at least a foot shorter than me; who can lift 4 times as much weight as I can on any machine (I hate following behind her on a circuit...I feel like an 8 year old).

Cathy, who has the most chipper attitude I have ever seen and often yells loudly in excitement; who smokes a cigarette the minute we get out of the gym; and who recently told me that she once attended a nudist summer camp and has since decided that nudity is the new clothing.

And Jen, who mothers everything; who leaned over to me from two treadmills away yesterday and said, "Your eye is looking a little pink. YOU HAVE PINK EYE!" as if I had just killed half the population with my infectious disease (which was, in all reality an irritated eye from a torn contact).

These women rock. I have never been so consistently sore from working out (mostly because I get lectured about trying harder and not giving up "because you're in the prime of your life and I'm old enough to be your mother and if I can do it you can do it too" if I do feel less than perky) and, thanks to their special workouts and occasional enthusiastic yells, I have also never been so conspicuous at the gym.