Comparing Yourself to Others: Always Great for the Self Esteem

Here is a great program for young girls that uses running to help with character development and self esteem. Click here to check it out.
 
So health benefits motivate me to work out, blah, blah, reduced cancer risk, blah, blah, stress relief, but what motivates me to push through each individual workout when I am at the gym is completely selfish and superficial. And that’d how I like it.
 
1. I always do my Cardio next to FloJo. I have never been an endurance athlete; the longest I would ever need to be working full out would be a 1 minutes 30 second floor routine, or the 5 second sprint down the vault runway. I get bored very easily and need something to keep me going. I wouldnt say I am competitive, but I will definately go for longer if I think someone is watching. I walk up to cardio machines, survey the runners/ellipticalers/bikers and find the sweatiest, fittest looking one. I hop on the machine next to them, if it is available,  peek over, make a mental note of how long they have been going, smile sheepishly when they give me the stink eye after inevitably catching me looking, and  start peddaling/running/ellipticalling. My pride keeps me from getting off before they do. I can’t start after them and quit before them. That’s ludacris.
 
2. I stretch and do floor work next to Olive Oil and Cisco Morris. I dont know if anyone outside of the Pacific Northwest knows who Cisco is so here is a sampling.

Imagine that face with a mild speech impediment and a love for ferns.

I actually met him once when I got lost in the U-District and had to stop at a Starb’s for directions. He gardens on TV. I garden and Im not on TV. I’m bitter. Anyway: the stretching area is next to the main walkway and is always lined with old men in tiny shorts doing their junk-exposing stretches or “pilates” and younger women doing abs and stability ball work because they dont want to “bulk up.” Stretching is relaxing, and for some reason my affect screams, PLEASE TALK TO ME OLD MEN, I AM JUST LIKE YOUR GRANDDAUGHTER, so a conversation is almost always struck up, despite the i-pod in my ear. Stretching should take a while, 10-30 seconds per stretch, so the conversation helps pass the time so I get in a nice good stretching session. And no other time in the real world can you just get up and walk away from someone you were talking to without being “rude” or “verbally abusive” or “not a good friend.” I have a short attention span. A real friend would know that.
 
3. I lift weights next to know-it-all men with no testicles. Everytime I walk into the free weight room at the gym, it gets about 8 times louder. Men sniff female, and the sounds of hurling weights, grunting and tendons tearing away from bone fill the air. I cant make fun of them too bad because thats the exact reason I go back there, everyone starts showing off. Not many women go into the free weight room because it is full of juiced up guys with awful form, gawking. I make it my personal mission to show them that little girls can lift weights, too. It helps me keep proper form and lift more challeneging weights to really stick it to ’em. Show off? Maybe, but it keeps me in there longer and atleast I keep quiet about it.
 
Whatever motivates you to work out harder/better/faster/stronger (Daft Punk reference anyone? If you say anything about Kanye West I will hunt you down) harness it and use it. Just dont tell people what it is because then they will think you are full of yourself, like all of you think I am right now. But, hey, I get my workout in everyday.