M y entire life has been devoted to not working out. I hate the idea of running when I can walk and walking when I can ride and riding when I can sit in a comfy chair and absorb culture passively from the boob tube. Amazingly enough, reading a book doesn’t seem to register as taxing even though it’s active and not passive. But I digress.

Last September I got sick of feeling fat and weak. I got inspired by watching all those athletes in the Olympic Games. They’re capable of incredible feats of strength and agility. They don’t jiggle when they walk. They seem upbeat and positive much of the time. They didn’t appear to be as down in the dumps or crabby as I. Not even last summer’s political extravaganzas made me happy. I was grouchy and grumpy from morning to night.

When you get enough sick of it, what’s the solution? Action. My daughter needed a place to go swimming. I searched all the gyms that we could reasonably get to on the MBTA. Then we looked at the prices. Then we calculated how long it would take to get to some of these places. Figuring out what place to visit and possibly join took a while. When you become Queen of the Procrastinators you will understand. Until then, heavy is my head since it wears the crown.

One afternoon, with no excuses left, I crossed the street in front of my apartment house, got on the bus and went to the address I had found on the Internet. The building was huge. It houses restaurants, a book store, a sporting goods store, a dry cleaner, a university and, in the basement, a fitness center. By now I’m shaking a little bit. If you’ve ever been an overweight klutz, you may recognize the flop sweat sheen of intimidation on my upper lip. I went down two flights of stairs and made my way to the entrance, which was protected with a big black desk manned by smiling skinny people with muscle tone. Beyond them were ranks of machines, most of which I had never seen. The old trepidation of the high school phys ed class locker room started to creep into me. Would they laugh me out of the building?

As it turns out, nothing could be farther from the truth. I had a tour of the facilities. There were more rooms full of even more exotic equipment. But I got an explanation about how to use them and what they could do for me. They showed me the pool. That at least I understood. And the great thing about it was that it was indoors. No more swims when the air temperature is way lower than the water. The other great thing? A hot tub with whirlpool jets. And a sauna. This place was looking like it might be doable. I got some free passes and went home.

The next day I put a set of what I hoped would pass for latter-day gym wear in a bag and took off to see if this place was going to be okay. I tried out all the weight machines. They all had clear, easy-to-follow pictured instructions. So far so good. Then I tried what had been described to me as an elliptical machine. Stop that laughing! I’d never seen one, never mind tried to use one. I lasted all of four minutes. It was a let-down, to say the least.

Determined not to go alone the next time, I shanghaied my daughter and we took the bus together to the gym. We packed our swimsuits and towels and she packed goggles and flip flops. It sure takes a lot of gear to do something that in my youth we used to do outdoors in a T-shirt and a pair of cut-offs, or, when we could get away with it, in nothing at all. We tried the weight machines again. Not too bad. We tried the stationary bicycle. That was easy. We tried that elliptical machine again. Well, five minutes isn’t too terrible, is it? Stop giggling back there! Then we went swimming. And the hot tub afterward was so soothing. I could get used to this.

I signed up for the membership. I had two sessions with a personal trainer. I was aching in muscles that I hadn’t felt in years. He tried to sell me many more training sessions. I declined, citing my desire to pay for groceries and rent for the rest of the year. He warned me that most people who try to establish an exercise regimen for themselves fail. Indeed, there is research that suggests that 70% of people who do purchase memberships end up not using them. I took his statement as a personal challenge.

At first it was three days a week. Each day a few more minutes was added to my time on the elliptical torture machine. Each day a few more repetitions with the weights. I added playlists to my iPod that seemed like they’d be good for listening while methodically hurting myself. I did some reading about exercise routines. What different motions do for specific muscles and how much to do. I increased my repetitions to three sets of twelve on each machine. I added more Jimi Hendrix to the playlists.

I upped the weight on the machines to the point that it was a bit of a struggle to finish the thirty-sixth rep. A milestone was reached when I was able to stay on the elliptical machine for thirty continuous minutes. Jimi was in my head singing, “Hey Joe,” where you goin’ with that sports drink in your hand. Then I started using the hill profiles to simulate climbing up and down. Gradually, I dialed up the resistance. More weight was added to the stacks on the machines. “Purple Haze” started to describe my state of mind.

At the end of three months I was working out four days a week, had lost twenty-five pounds and my clothes no longer fit. I ran into my former trainer at the gym right before the Christmas holidays and I told him that I wanted to thank him.

“For what?” he said.

“For telling me I wouldn’t be able to make my goal on my own.”

He smiled and asked what my next goal would be. I told him that I wanted to lose more pounds but that my tangible goal had changed. There was a mountain near the place where I grew up and I was going to climb it this summer and I was going to stand on the summit. His response?

“You can’t climb a mountain.”

Sure, that’s right. But Jimi Hendrix thinks I can. Jimi escorts me into the Zen state that lets me keep going. Jimi is with me every step of the way. He tells me so in the music I listen to while I work out:

“Waterfall, nothing can harm me at all,
my worries seem so very small
with my waterfall.”*

Working out with Jimi Hendrix. There’s no better way for me.

*Lyrics from “May This Be Love” by Jimi Hendrix