A woman who went viral for flying off a treadmill and losing her leggings in the process has spoken out.
I find it awkward enough even walking into the gym, but if I ever ended up doing something like dropping my water bottle, slipping off a machine or heaven forbid, being sent spiralling off a treadmill with my gym leggings around my ankles, I think I'd run out crying never to be seen again. But that's not how Alyssa Konkel reacted.
The 26-year-old didn't just dust herself off and pick herself up rather than simply lying on the floor and hoping she disappeared, but she also sought out the footage of her fall and then uploaded it to her Instagram - making her account public.
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It takes some guts to upload footage like that to your own social media and Konkel has since opened up about how it feels now the clip's gone viral and whether or not she finds the incident embarrassing.
In an interview with Fox 32 Chicago, Konkel opened up in more detail about the morning of 24 May when she went to work out at the gym on what she believed was a 'regular morning'.
She continues: "I was just running on the treadmill, doing my fast cardio - run for 30 seconds, walk for a minute.
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"And I'm running and then in that 30 seconds, I fall and my pants come off."
Keen to figure out what exactly happened that caused her to fall - and just how bad it looked to an outsider - Konkel asked her gym for the video.
Personally, I would've probably burned the footage and asked the gym to delete every single copy, but Konkel is much braver than me.
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After thinking about the footage for 'a couple of hours,' the 26-year-old decided she was 'just going to post' it.
At 11.00pm that night, she thought: "I was like you know what? I'll make everything public and let's see how many people would view my video."
And the video popped off - but does Konkel now regret it?
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Konkel recalls how in less than 12 hours, the video had already amassed 3,600 views.
"It was crazy," she notes.
Did the response to her video make her rethink her decision to post it? "Not at all. You know what? It is what it is. Everyone has butts."
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The gym-goer reassures she's since pretty much fully recovered from the fall.
Her injuries - which were 'pretty bad,' including a 'couple of scrapes on [her] knees and [her] shin' - have since now 'all healed' and 'everything is clear'.
However, she won't be hopping back on a treadmill at level 10 anytime soon, particularly as it's the second time she's had an accident on the gym machine, hitting her chin when she was a kid.
Konkel adds: "And I'll make sure to double knot my shoes every time. When I slowed the video down I saw my shoelace came untied and I think that's what sent me right off."
For Konkel, it's a lesson learned, around 1,500 more followers gained in 'the last week-and-a-half' and a great story to tell the grandkids.
Topics: Social Media, Viral, Instagram, US News
Poppy Bilderbeck