I Have A Gym Purse

Me with my gym purse. And my awesome hat. It was St. Patrick's day in Turbokick! And no, I didn't work out in the hat. (Thanks to Johnathan for the pic!)

I carry a gym purse. This is separate from a gym bag - you know, the thing that normal people take to the gym. Don't get me wrong, I do have a gym bag; I use it to carry diapers, wipes, padlock, extra socks, a neon blue sports bra for Gym Buddy Allison, that sort of thing. But I happen to be a girl with a lot of stuff. It seemed like once I was on the gym floor, I was constantly juggling my iPod, ID cards, sweat towel, water bottle, keys and weight gloves so I picked up this cute lil' Seussian number from the dollar store to help manage my trail of fitness crap.

Unfortunately, like any purse, it has turned into a crap receptacle of sorts. I cleaned out my Gym Purse today and in addition to the above-mentioned essentials, this is what I found:
- sweat bands (to protect my wrists against kettlebell thumpage)
- a Zumba music CD lent to me by a friend so I can "work on my hips."
- a magazine workout leftover from the Drop 10 Pounds Ridiculousness Experiment
- a back issue of People magazine (Turbo Jennie gives me hers after she's done - ostensibly so I can use it as blog fodder but really so I can read those mushy human interest stories they stick in as filler in between all the celebs. Seriously, the one a few weeks ago about a runner girl helping homeless men made me teary!)
- a business card with about 10 random phone numbers and e-mail addresses jotted on it
- chapstick
- a partially unwrapped tampon
- 10 bobby pins
- a sweaty t-shirt that I had shed at some point during a past workout
- a book for Gym Buddy Krista (I brought it on Saturday, girl!!)
- a Las Vegas, NV keychain that Gym Buddy Allison brought me as a souvenir from the vacation she didn't take me on. (She took her husband instead! Seriously!!)
AND, my personal favorite....
- about 300 tiny pieces of paper with random CrossFit, Monkey Bar Gym and other sundry workouts scribbled on them. It's gotten to the point where every time I pull my sweat towel out of my purse, they rain out like confetti. Par-TAY!

But you know what I don't have in my Gym Purse? A hair band.

I don't know about you but I can do without a lot of things during a workout - I'm even okay if I forget my water bottle and am forced to make pit stops at the water fountain - but I cannot endure a workout with my hair in my face. I made this awful discovery during the warm-up track of TurboKick the other day. Panicked, I started asking all the Gym Buddies if they had a spare I could use. No luck. And then a girl whom I have spoken to a few times but don't know terribly well, jumped in to save the day producing a hair band out of her gym bag (note: it was most definitely not a purse.) It was the nicest act of Stranger Gym Kindness ever directed towards me! I think I might have teared up a little.

After class was over, I fished it out of my sweat-soaked hair to give it back to her. Taking one look at the wet headband, she shook her head and said, "Why don't you just keep it?"

Realizing how nasty I was, I quickly apologized, "Oh, do you want me to wash it and give it back to you tomorrow?"

Gym Buddy Allison burst out laughing. "Who washes a hair band?"

Gym Buddy Lisseth jumped in, "I would if it were a scrunchie."

Gym Buddy Krista: "Who wears scrunchies anymore?!"

Me: "Well maybe I have lice!"

Allison: "You have lice*??"

By this point, Nice Girl was gone and I was the proud owner of a new red and black hair band. I tried to tuck it into my purse. It wouldn't fit.

So - now that you've heard my confession, any one else have a gym purse (identified as a bag solely for the purpose of carting your junk around the gym floor, not schlepping it to and from the gym)? What are your essentials for a gym workout? How do you carry them around? Are you one of those people who carts their whole huge gym bag onto the fitness floor and then uses it to take up a whole weight bench? (Noooo! Not my readers!) Have you ever done a random act of gym kindness?

*My apologies to the gym buddies for condensing a much longer and funnier conversation into the above...