Yes, this comes direct to you on your computer or other web-surfing gadget, culled from other people's timely holiday gift guides, just days too late to be any good to anyone! But if you must know, it's really just an excuse to riff on some stuff, and anyway, if you see anything you like you could buy it for yourself or return the Baywatch Beach workout tapes you got in exchange for some of these beauties. So here we go! Let's count down backwards, just like we did for last seconds of the New Year.
5. The Road ID. Because it's always nice to send a gift that says, "I fear your running/cycling habit is going to end up with you unconscious in a ditch somewhere." Oh, whatever, it is a good thing, these little bracelets with emergency information, just in case you get incapacitated or hit by a car or have a heart attack or just don't feel like talking to the EMTs who are checking on you. I'm not really knocking the IDs, and you can even get me one. Please add that I am allergic to penicillin and women's fitness magazines and niceness. (I am actually allergic to penicillin---that's a tip for any of you who want to off me in some clandestine way. Just slip me some penicillin in my morning coffee, and I'll never notice. See? That's my gift for you. Don't say I never gave you anything.) Anyway, emergency gifts are great, I even got a disaster preparedness kit for xmas, just in the nick of time, because last night I had a crisis-like snack attack and had to eat my MREs. Should we have "the Big One" which in my hood means an earthquake, I will simply be carrying the flashlight and the knife and looking for which one of you is, as Elizabeth puts it, the most nicely marbled. Back to the ID: I guess you can even put a personalized engraved message on them. How about "Suck it up, lazy pants" or "Keep on with the force/Don't stop/Don't stop till you get enough" (which I used to think was "Don't stop till you get it up") or "Your booty looks hot when you run. Just ask that trucker behind you." Or "I learned everything I ever needed to know about anything from Fitness Fixation."
4. Kettlebells. These are a great gift. I actually mean that. Or you could get your loved one an iPod-Nike thingie. Or a heart rate monitor, if you are so inclined. I monitor my heart rate, exertion, and overall caloric burn mostly by the amount I can whine out loud, but that's so low-tech. Do you like all these real gifts? (Hey, if you are local to me, which sadly does not confer the same happiness as being in proximity to Ludacris, don't forget that a boot camp subscription or some personal training sessions are a wonderful and thoughtful present.) Um, maybe you could get the Swimp3, these googles that pipe music into your head when you swim in the pool. I actually want that, I might even swim if I had that. Or how about a Snuggie? That's a good fitness gift. Or a dumbbell phone. As long as you spend all day on personal calls---and I don't approve of that because it detracts from personal web surfing your favorite exercise blog---but if you do, you can get really freakin' buffed, I bet. I've always been a fan of exercise equipment that's supposed to tone you while you work. Like this. I love this video, by the way. Mother effing FITNESS ORB yeah!!
