WO Magazine Spring 2016 | Page 65

Regular Jenny, Tina and I booked our first session. None of us ladies works out regularly or…well… ever. But most importantly let me explain that I am 100 years older than both of these gals. We meet our trainer. Let’s call him Dean because I now have no desire to change his name to protect him. You change names to protect the innocent. Dean is not innocent. You can find Dean’s mug shot and bio on the White Oaks website and we thought he looked like a friendly enough fellow. We were not afraid. We were so wrong. Our first session was one hour long (I mean come on!) and my legs were burning 10 minutes in. By 20 minutes they felt like lead weights and by the half-hour mark I was crying sloppily and truly believed that my thigh muscles might be bleeding on the inside. If I’d only looked over at Tina and Jenny I’d have seen they were struggling too…but by then I was going blind, so truly, I couldn’t even see them clearly. The next day was not good. The following day, worse. I decided to quit. Ed Lepp tried to talk me off the ledge all weekend using tactics that ranged from guilt to shame to encouragement and finally to begging, but it was all a blur. He told me I’d be tagged a quitter for life and people would point and stare: “There goes Julie Lepp, the big quitter.” To be honest, I was totally fine with that. TRAINING Jenny and Tina stumbled into my office on stiff legs to discuss “the quitting.” They sympathized with me as they were sore too, but of course, not as sore as I was because as previously mentioned I’m a full century older. We needed a personal training intervention. Ed Lepp, our team leader, and my long-suffering husband told Dean he’d have to ease up or else. Ed Lepp comes through! Gawd, he’s sexy! o