Jeremy lay in bed, spooned with Heather. He was thinking back on how today started his new active lifestyle.
Apparently because most Animalians had higher energy levels, they were up three hours earlier than most humans would like to wake up on a work day. Most of the time, for those who had new children born recently, they started with caring for their newborns. Others, who still hadn't had children yet because they were egg layers, got up to turn their eggs before starting their workday prep. Still others, who hadn't even had eggs or hadn't even given birth yet due to being arranged for live birthing, made their ways to Claw Coliseum to begin their workouts and burn off excessive energy.
Jeremy was able to get a lot of the membership fees waived through the "member referral discount", but while he was choosing workout clothes, he was ambushed by two velociraptors who were actually Japanese identical twins born with HIV. The owner of the workout clothes managed to get them off with pent-up energy and eagerness to meet the bondmate of one of their classmates.
Jeremy's locker was right next to Heather's in the coed locker room. Fortunately, Heather was able to keep Jeremy from making a fool of himself by eating the birth control pills out of the vending machines used, just because both the pills and the machine looked like one of those snack machines with spiral springs to hold the candy and/or chips. But Candace, who was part of Project Dinotopia to see if it could cure her recurring leukemia disease and now was a Parasaurolophus with varying shades of blue for her hide, still teased him about it by calling him a "greenhorn." Fortunately, she was able to downplay her teasing by showing how her new skull allowed her to make musical sounds with her horn.
Warm-up stretching and aerobics was something new for him, not only because of the high heat, but also because he was in worse shape than he originally thought. While others could do both the aerobics and deal with the high heat for longer periods of time, he could only last for 90 minutes before needing 15 minutes to recover, much to the amusement of Walter, who came to Project Dinotopia as treatment for brittle bone disease and was now a brawny ankylosaur. He was looking forward to the opening of the Mesozoic Fight Club in January, and was ready to test his new reinforced skeleton and back armor.
Lunch hour was actually welcomed by Jeremy, mainly because he was very hungry, and didn't know much about his new diet. Fortunately, there were free diet plans to help newly converted learn about their new dietary restrictions. While he was interested in the Claw Coliseum's pool and battle octagon, he was a little distracted by Molly (whom he met in the pool), who was an Olympic Athlete who had to miss the Rio Games due to getting most of her left calf muscle chomped by a shark just days before the event, and became a Dolichorynchops as part of Project Dinotopia Aquatica, the subdivision of Project Dinotopia that mainly dealt with Marine Reptiles. The reason for this was because she had seen the IMAX movie 'Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure' and felt a connection to the main character. The Project was able to restore her missing calf muscle, but it still left a good deal of scar tissue where she had been bitten. Unabashed by this, Molly often joked that there was still a shark's tooth in that leg, which made flexing it a little painful but didn't impact her performance.
Weight Training was also a big surprise for him because he was apparently stronger than he looked. He was apparently capable of bench pressing half his own body weight without too much trouble. What was apparently common, yet somewhat distracting, were the girls that seemed to hang out in the room and making jokes and comments on the physiques of the guys ("There are some real meaty buns I'd like to take a bite out of."). Eventually they were shooed out by a person carrying a spray tank that wouldn't look out of place with a professional insect exterminator, but was filled with a mixture of dry ice and grape juice. That was clearly apparent when one of the girls called over her shoulder teasingly, "We know where you live.", as she ran out the door.
The final lesson of the day was Dance class, much to Jeremy's surprise. Though this was made clearer when the plans for the next IAC included members of Project Dinotopia Dancing to "Roll Back the Rock" from 'We're Back: A Dinosaur Story', among other songs, and they needed all the preparation they could get before it started year after next.
When they finally got home, Heather rewarded Jeremy with some "personal time" in their bedroom. That was quickly apparent because, from all the thumping coming from Tyra's upstairs bedroom, she was enjoying her new stud, as she called him.
"Jeremy," said Heather sleepily, "What are you thinking about?"
"Just about my first day with a new active lifestyle." confirmed Jeremy.
"Hope you have enough energy for our Weekend Workout Competition." said Heather, a little impishly.
"Wha...?" asked Jeremy, not knowing about this.
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Apparently the Weekend Workout challenge involved strenuous exercises outdoors. At least that was what the 10K was. Heather had to call the Scale-Trolley in order to get both Jeremy and herself home because his feet were so sore and he was so exhausted from the run. One Black Mamba Animalian on the trolley managed to tease him a little bit about being one of the few snake Animalians capable of completing a sub-five-minute-mile, but she made sure that it wasn't intended to be mean.