How Not to Seduce Olympic Athletes

I’ve just spent a deal of time on the floor with Iwan Thomas. This has led me to believe that perhaps the only answer is segregation of some sort.

This is what happened:

I went to the gym with the Physicist. She ran, I rowed, she cross-trainered, I went on the Kylie-Bum device.

In case you need to know (and you do if you aren’t sporting Kylie’s bum but would like to) (I am because I do know) it’s those recumbent bikes. At first it’s hard to understand why anyone should want to lie down and cycle at the same time, especially in the gym when any movement forward would lead one to collide with the bank of TV sets. But a quick experiment with one of these apperati reveals that your gluteus maximus undergoes such trauma that it is obviously Kylie’s vehicle of choice.

It’s also hard to know why every gym sports a bank of TV sets when there are so many other fascinating things to look at. Iwan Thomas for example.

So, we ran, rowed, cross-trained, Kylie-bummed and then I headed for that corner of the gym where the mats are in order to stretch my aching maximus. He (Iwan) was on the adjacent mat. Improving his biceps brachii. I smiled. He flexed. I moaned gently to myself. He had his iPod on so didn’t hear me. I had my iPod on so may have not moaned quite as gently as I imagined. I stretched my maximus by deftly touching my toes, glancing Iwan-ward hoping he would admire just how very flexible my maximi were. He flexed his pectoralis major. My gastrocnemius fluttered. I did an unlikely yoga pose that involved putting my knee in the general area of my ear and tried at the same time to catch his eye. I caught mine instead.

Meanwhile the Physicist had finished running and joined us on the mats. She proceeded to be blond, young, do fifty sit-ups followed by the splits. Iwan smiled at her. I turned the volume up on my iPod to cunningly disguise my middle-agedness.

I have written the gym a note and put it in the suggestion box. What I have suggested is this:

Could we please have gym segregation? The not-so-young of us would like not to be exposed the blond, beautiful and muscled Iwans and the Physicist/gymnasts of the world as it can cause strain of the gluteus maximus, impair our cardiac functioning and dissolve what self-worth we had applied prior to arrival.

The management replied:

You’ll find that it is written in the small print of your contract with the aforementioned establishment that all persons over the age of forty are, for their own safety and well-being, to keep their attention firmly fixed on the bank of TV screens provided for just this contingency. Any breech of this agreement is at your own risk.