I’ll raise the bar … if it’s chocolate!

Thank you, Winnipeg.

Thank you for helping me stick with our big fitness challenge, Spring Training, which has now passed the halfway point, which I am celebrating via the technique of lying on my living room carpet moaning quietly like a wounded woodland creature.

I could not have made it this far without the help of pretty much everyone in this city. When I started this thing, it never occurred to me that, wherever I went, people I’ve never met (and strangers, too) would do the following:

1. Offer me helpful fitness tips;
2. Yell at me because I have wandered within 100 yards of a doughnut;
3. Compliment my physique by saying: "Looking good, Big Fella!" Or: "HEY, PINHEAD, WAKE UP! THE LIGHT’S BEEN GREEN FOR 20 (BAD WORD) MINUTES!" Mostly that first thing.

I guess people in this city are serious fitness buffs. I have been inundated with emails from readers sharing stories of how they lost (a) 200 pounds; (b) eight inches of unsightly fat across their bellies; and (c) $40,000 to some guy who sent them an email claiming to be a Nigerian prince.

It is deeply touching. Seriously. Especially when I’m at the gym, GoodLife Fitness’s Kenaston Boulevard branch, where I have a nifty three-month membership to use in my battle to no longer look like Jabba The Hutt’s evil twin.

When I’m pumping iron at the gym — and by "pumping iron" I mean "looking at it with an intense gleam in my eye" — I am often approached by fellow gym rats who share their motivational stories.

For example, the other day I was chugging away on the treadmill, watching the Food Network on one of the seven TV screens on the wall, when a friendly and fit guy hopped on the machine beside me.

It turns out that he’s been coming to GoodLife for about a year or so and has lost somewhere in the neighbourhood of 150 pounds, which would be roughly both my legs. He was a pretty motivating guy to spend time with, considering I have basically lost, like, a pound.

The other folks I need to thank are the extremely nice people (and there are a lot of you out there) who either own a company that makes health food bars, work for a company that makes health food bars, know someone who once worked for a company that makes health food bars, or live in the same general area as someone who may at one time have read about someone who made health food bars in their basement.

As I write these words, I am looking at my desk, which is not easy because it is covered roughly three feet deep with free health food bars I have received since we started this challenge about five weeks ago. You think I’m kidding, but I’m not. I have also received a great deal of information about something called "Healthy Chocolate," which, if true, should easily win at least 10 Nobel Prizes.

I also want to make a point of thanking the people I work with, such as our editor and our deputy editor, who kindly took me for coffee the other day. On our way out of the building, I stopped in front of the elevator.

"What do you think you’re doing??" these two senior editors demanded, looking at me the way you’d look at a reasonably intelligent fish.

"I’m waiting for the elevator," is what I told them.

"Uh-uh!" is what they replied, frowning. "We’re taking the stairs, Mr. Fitness Challenge Man!"

So that’s what we did. We walked DOWN three flights, got coffee, then walked back UP three flights. By the time I got back to my cubicle, I was huffing and puffing and ready to pass out in a pool of my own sweat, which seemed to please my editors.

So I’m very thankful to them. And I’m very thankful to you guys, too, for caring about me. But I think, all things considered, I will feel a lot safer if I spend more time hiding out at the gym.

Because they only have two flights of stairs, and their coffee machine is on the ground floor.

P.S. I lied. They don’t have a coffee machine.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca