This is shocking news, trust me. I consider the flight of stairs that separates my blue-ray player from my refrigerator to be exercise. Also, my office is on the ground floor and the bathroom is either one flight up or one flight down. Either way, I'm walking a lot of stairs every day. That totally counts as exercise.
I joined the gym last week, and the reason I chose this particular gym (the local YMCA - I dare you to not have that song in your head now) because it has an indoor running track and a pool. I love running but I hate all the frigging hills in our area. Plus, I don't like being cold, so running outside in Winter and/or Spring is not happening. I went running twice last week, and enjoyed it, even if the indoor track is a little underwhelming. It's kind of small - 25 times around equals a mile! - but I can't run on a treadmill without holding on for dear life or falling off completely, so it's a good option for me. But you run the track clockwise on Monday/Wednesday/Friday and counterclockwise the rest of the week, and since I've been going on Mondays and Wednesdays, I'm getting worried about being lopsided. Note to self: build in a trip to the gym on Tuesday. I can run about a half mile - though not all at once, buh - and have been doing about a mile on the track. I suppose I could walk a lot further than that, though, so maybe I should be trying to go two miles total right now? I'm trying to build up stamina without overdoing it. It's pretty difficult because I feel like I should be running like a gazelle even though I haven't been seriously physically active since my last semester in college. In 2003. (By the way, super yikes to that!)
This past weekend I finally got myself to a sporting goods store to buy a swimsuit. I have a worn out bikini (big-girl style, so not flattering) and a couple of old (super old - see the above reference to physical activity in 2003) one-piece suits, but nothing that I can actually wear in public, so my foray into the pool has been on hold until I got myself appropriately accoutered. I went for a run yesterday, then stretched, then made my way to the pool.
I was on the swim team in middle school, grew up in Florida and am therefore intimately acquainted with the beach and the pool, and took a swim class at UMass in 2003 that I loved, loved. I knew that I enjoyed swimming, but I didn't remember how much I adored it until I put a toe in that delightfully chlorinated water. Heaven. The pool at UMass was "heated", and I took that class in Winter, and let me dispel any myth still remaining that the water was anything resembling warm. 78 degrees sounds warm on paper, but in practice it is frigging cold, especially when you had to trudge through snow to get to said pool. So I was skeptical when the YMCA claimed that their pool was heated to "between 84 and 86 degrees." I put that first toe in very gingerly.
Words cannot express my relief and delight when I found that the water was, indeed, warm. Not quite bath water, but getting there. I was so relieved that I wouldn't have to spend the first 10 minutes shivering and trying to "warm up" in a large body of water.
The other fabulous thing about the pool at the Y? It's unpopular. At least in the Winter. I've never seen more than 2 people swimming laps at any given time, and while there were 5 total today by the time I was ready to leave, I had a lane to myself the entire time.
My time at the gym is rapidly becoming a welcome escape from my desk and surprisingly stress relieving, too. Well, surprising to no one but me, that is. I find that I am looking forward to the gym and am frustrated that I can't run longer/farther because it means I spend less time running. Another argument for walking that extra mile, I suppose. I gave up running years ago because of terrible, terrible shin splints. Like physical therapy terrible. I've been running in my Vibrams and can happily report that the shin splints are nowhere to be found. (Knock on wood...) And jumping in the pool after a hot, sweaty run (don't worry, I shower first) is such a joy.
Also, and I know this could be water weight or breakfast or even just random fluctuations, but I lost 4 pounds since I started going to the gym. I weighed myself on Jan. 31 and then again this morning and I was 4 pounds lighter. I'm calling it a win. I'm also probably going to avoid the scale for a little while... Probably not the best idea to obsessively weigh myself every week...
I never (in a million years) thought I'd say this, but I can't wait to go back.
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