It’s possible I can’t stand you. We may never have exchanged a word, and if we met in another context, we might be best friends, lovers or soulmates. But in the context of the Marino Center, I just want you out of my sight.

If you don’t frequent Marino, you’re off the hook. If you think of the Marino Center as an excessively tall Au Bon Pain, this isn’t aimed at you. This is aimed at all the people who visit Marino on a regular basis, and somehow haven’t figured out the gym is not a singles bar and who still don’t know how to use the machines.

I am a closet gym rat (although I suppose after this is published, not so closeted). I don’t seem like a gym-going girl, but I am, and I take my gym time very seriously. It’s my sanctuary, where I can get into my zen place, clear my head and work up some endorphins. And nothing destroys my sanctuary more than the girls who are there to look cute.

Exercise is not cute. When done properly, exercise is sweaty, smelly and downright disgusting. And yet there are still so many girls who fuss with their hair in the locker room. There are so many girls in coordinated gym clothes, complete with tight little pants that require a thong to avoid underwear lines. I don’t object to thongs, and I don’t object to exercise, but the two are like drinking and dialing: The combination is never good.

My favorite thong story happened last year, when I was on the Stairmaster. This meant I was looking at a row of the gyrating backsides of people on the elliptical machines. This is a normal enough occurrence, except on this particular day there was a girl wearing a lacy red thong, prominently displayed above the line of her pants.

This was mildly irritating, but nothing more. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that my annoyance turned to outrage. Glancing covertly from side-to-side and thinking herself unobserved, she pulled her pants down slightly, exposing even more of her thong. She was doing it on purpose.

You may find my outrage unwarranted. Girls are probably shrugging their shoulders as they read this, and guys are probably looking for somewhere private to enjoy the image, but the fact remains, I was pissed. Here she was in my sanctuary, my temple, dragging in all the sexual games and drama and superficiality I was trying to escape for just a few hours.

Almost as irritating as people like “thong-girl” are the people who come day after day and still use the machines wrong. It kills me. I can understand it for the first month or two, because I too was a freshman last year, trying new machines and generally finding my way. This is different.

The stationary bicycles have several modes, some of which require a heart rate monitor, because the machine adjusts the resistance to your heart rate.

There are heart rate monitors at the front desk, and you can pick one up with your lock.

But instead of finding out what they need, most people I see on the bikes simply don’t bother. They see the machine flash the message at them, but instead of going and getting a heart rate monitor or switching to a different mode, they just keep spinning their legs around. Meanwhile, I’m grinding my teeth in frustration, trying not to hate them.

This may all seem very trivial, but it’s part of a larger ideal that if you’re going to do something, you should do it right. It pains me to see people waste an hour or two of their day to exercise and then using their time inefficiently.

This final anecdote goes out to one particular fellow, who waited half an hour for an elliptical machine a few weeks ago. Now, I’m not saying the elliptical is low-impact, I’m just saying it’s the machine of choice for girls who have a little makeup on and don’t want to break a sweat. So there I was on the Stairmaster, and this fellow came over and stood next to my machine, watching the ellipticals and clearly waiting for an opening.

I was on the Stairmaster for half an hour, and when I got off, he was still there, staring into space and fiddling with his iPod. He wasted half an hour of his workout time while there were plenty of other cardio machines open, but he just had to have an elliptical. I wonder if he knew that for the entire half-hour I was thinking what a pansy he was. I guess he does now.

Some of these things are personal pet peeves, others are just a matter of making the most of your workout so I don’t shake my head with chagrin. In any case, I’ll see you at the gym. I’ll be the one in an old T-shirt, looking disheveled and unpresentable and perhaps secretly despising you.

– Hailey Heinz is a sophomore journalism major and a member of The News staff.