The Fitness Test

At the gym, Elizabeth (the owner, a really really sweet person who happens to look like Barbie), asked with a big smile as soon as I walked in the door if I wanted to take the Harvard Cardiovascular Fitness Test. They were offering it free as part of the grand opening of the gym! I instantly flashed back to junior highschool P.E., when we had to do those awful standardized tests, and i would hang from the pull-up bar, kicking my feet and swaying vainly back and forth until my minute was up, unable to chin myself even once.

I blinked out of the horrible flashback and saw Elizabeth/Barbie smiling at me in her friendly way, and although I really, really wanted to say no to the test, I heard myself answering, "Sure!" like it was no big deal. With enthusiasm, even. As if I'd come into the gym for no other purpose. "OK!" she said, picking up a stopwatch and clipboard. "Follow me!"

I wished I had stayed home sick.

The test wasn't bad, though. I had to step on and off an aerobic step, elevated pretty high, for three minutes, at a quick tempo set by Elizabeth/Barbie's stopwatch thing. At the end of the three minutes, I took my pulse. And discovered that, apparently, I have been taking my pulse WRONG all these years, because both my diastolic and systolic beats are so strong that it's hard to tell between them. So for all these years I've just thought I had a really, really fast heart. When I told Elizabeth my pulse rate, she thought I might be having a cardiac event. She had me walk around the gym slowly for a while, and went to consult with her associate. She came back and had me do the treadmill, frequently testing my heartrate on the little monitor thing. Eventually, she actually took my pulse herself, and discovered my mistake. I felt kind of dumb, but was very relieved to know there's nothing wrong with me. And, once she recalculated my pulse rate on the test, I actually scored in the "Excellent" range! So I was pretty happy about that.