Stairway to Nowhere

In my gym, there are two things you can count on: A woman doing fancy things on the Stairmaster, and The Rachel Zoe Project on the big screens.

This afternoon, Rachel was on (and I'm not sure how this is--even if I dash home and flick on Bravo, the show's always over. In the gym, it's marathon Rachel) and the empty Stairmaster was flanked by two extremely sweaty Masters, both cheating by riding the stairs all the way to the bottom before grabbing the handlebars and lugging themselves to the top at the last second. There were no fancy Masters in sight.

This might be my opportunity.

I've always been opposed to the Stairmaster, not just because I live in a hilly city and feel like my butt gets enough targeted exercise on my frequent trips to the grocery store, but, frankly, because it's hard as hell and I go to the gym to feel good about myself, not to be exhausted after five minutes. But I just finished a book in which an idiot secondary character is always on a Stairmaster, so it was on my mind, and my realization of the fancy Masters is a new thing, too. If Janice could do it, so could I.

I guess I should explain the fancy Masters, since it had never occurred to me that one could do anything on the machine other than climb. These women--invariably in their early 20s--can walk sideways on the Stairmaster. Sometimes they do squats, or take the stairs two at a time. What's really eye-catching, though, is the arabesque. They're always doing Stairmaster arabesques.

Show-offs.

The first step of a Stairmaster is about two feet off the ground, which isn't that big of a deal, except that the machine starts to move as soon as you mount it, so it's two feet you fall down when the stairs slip from under you because you're obviously still more engrossed in untangling your iPod headphones than assuming the solid object you're standing on can't be counted on. I'm not sure anyone saw me do that.

I did a little running start to get on the next time, trotting up to the top step quickly and trying to figure out which buttons I needed to push to get a good pace going before I ended up at the bottom again. The woman next to me started heavily sighing and making a big show of craning her neck around me--my head was blocking The Rachel Zoe Project.

I, of course, was pumped that I'd have the distraction of Rachel and her cronies while wrestling with my most hated machine. But as soon as I looked up at the screen, I stumbled. I should have known. I'm always trying to read the newspaper or the mail while walking up the stairs to my apartment, and always trip by the third landing. There's no way, even at a consistent pace (and I had chosen the "interval" setting), to not fall on this thing. Plus, the stairs are designed for women with maybe a size 5 foot. Mine are almost 9s. The arabesque girls must be en pointe during their workouts.

So I spent ten minutes clutching the railings for dear life as I lugged my way up (allegedly) 52 flights of stairs. That's really the only satisfying number you get out of a Stairmaster. I mean, ten minutes of cardio, while more than the average American gets in a day, is still ten minutes less than what you're supposed to do if you exercise daily (which I don't, unless you count the grocery store hill). The "calories burned" number, which I know is bullshit but still check at the end of my workout, was 145, which is the approximate calorie count of this pile of Mother's chocolate chip cookies I have laying on my stomach while I write. But 52 flights? In ten minutes? I mean, I could maybe be a firefighter with that number.

Except, of course, that when I was done I had to leap off the thing because I really, truly thought I might vomit and didn't see how I could possibly handle the cool-down. (Why do they even program cool-downs into the machinery? Isn't walking to the locker room a cool-down?) I'll give this to the Stairmaster Corporation: For all they don't prepare you to mount the machine, they really have the dismount covered. There are elaborate directions about how to get off the machine posted right where you spend all your time staring intently: right above your feet. I had the whole thing memorized after those ten minutes--including the warning about how the last step disappears two feet above the floor. Good tip.

I was a lot safer retreating to the stretching space, where, in the mirror, I watched a very large woman climb BACKWARDS up the Stairmaster. Never again.

PS Oops. Just ate two more cookies.