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Confessions of a stair mistress

During my freshman year of college, I faithfully kept a journal. I'd never done so successfully, though I'd often tried. My writing resolve always peters out after a few weeks. This time, however, was different: This was my exercise log. It began the spring of my high school graduation. I updated it daily, sometimes more. It was a simple, spiral-bound notebook, college ruled and covered with doodles. At night I tucked it away in my locked file cabinet. This sloppy little notebook was both my pride and joy and my horrible secret.

At 6:30 a.m. on the second day of freshman orientation, while everyone else was sleeping, I crept out of my room. Most of my dormmates had stayed up until about 4 a.m., drinking and gabbing and getting a toehold on the freshman 15 (after all, what's more collegiate than fattening, late-night, drunken revelry?), but I had gone to bed embarrassingly early so I could rise at dawn to do my workout. I hurried through stretching lest anyone see me. When I wrote it all down in diary a few hours later, I felt cleaner and somehow relieved.

Sept. 4, 1993
1:31 min. run (felt clean, no one else outside. Found the local running trail. Prob. did 10 miles.)
30 min. Stairmaster at level 9 (very tired, almost quit)
40 min. bike at level 5
set of floor exercises (sit ups, push ups, ab. crunches)
Plus, the 5 min., run back from gym. (half-mile)

Liz, you must stay "the course," (the plan) don't get thrown off by college life.

As the year progressed, I kept up my furious pace. I arrived at my classes sweaty and breathless. I had just squeezed in a full hour's run on the indoor track, after all. (Plus the five or six minutes it took to jog to class. Every peripatetic minute was timed, noted, counted.) I made it to my "Archaeology of Death" class only half the time because it conflicted with the open swim hours at the pool. I would cancel on friends to accommodate my workouts, or not even make plans with them at all. With so many athletic outlets to choose from, I chose them all, from aerobics (step, hi-low) to weights to running -- my bread and butter, if you will. I was already playing varsity lacrosse (until I got cut from the team), but I'd still preface the grueling two and a half-hour practices with my own six-mile run. I always had to do more than anyone else. After I caught the men's rowing team running up the 14-floor sciences library stairs, I did that too. Just six days after I sprained my ankle during step aerobics class, my log says I ran seven miles.

Dec. 2, 1993
10-mile (1:35 min.) run (felt awful, snow was shitty; ankle still achy)
1:30 min. swim (mostly crawl, some breast)
35 min. bike at level 5
evening run: 35 min. run after dinner and before movies.

I was seeing a therapist at the time to deal with the recent loss of my brother. Barbara's office was exactly a mile and three-quarters from my dorm room. I know because I ran to and from my sessions. After another fruitless 50-minute hour, I was ready to seamlessly segue back into "my course" -- my intangible, ceaseless pursuit of perfection, of some kind of catharsis through sweat, of a palpable sense of peace and purity.

That winter I remember we were deluged with snow and ice. The streets were a mess. Sometimes they even closed the gym. This threw me into a tailspin of self-loathing, anger and lethargy. I'd mope around heavily, and retreat to the library. This was my black-and-white thought process: If I couldn't do it all, the run, plus the bike, the swim, the aqua-jogging -- if I couldn't complete "the course" -- well, then fuck it, the whole endeavor was ruined, I was ruined.

Still, when the roads cleared, I'd begin my solitary orbit anew.

N E X T_ P A G E .|. Slaves to sweat: A new breed of college students