I missed the first Fitness World Groupon, thinking my local Fitness World had not gone Steve Nash, but got onto the second one that was even cheaper! The gym got the last laugh, of course, because I got convinced to sign on for 15 more months with an attractive back-to-school/corporate rate.
It just goes to show that my life goes in cycles. I’m back to haunting a gym and now reminisce that I’ve been a gym rat at two other periods of my life.
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Back in 1999, I joined the YMCA in North York (Toronto) for a few months. I think the rate was about $27 on a month-to-month basis. I didn’t have a very demanding job and went to work out five nights per week before heading home to my first apartment, a basement suite in a house on Empress Avenue. I remember weighing myself and the weight I recorded, but I dearly wish I could remember how I felt at that wonderful, low weight. It was also at the YMCA where I ran into an old roommate (my White Knight) and we kind of dated–it was just really friends hanging out–for a month. But I was leaving the province and that ended it with White Knight and my Y membership.
I can’t remember now for how long around 2001, I took advantage of the gym in the fantastic fieldhouse at Dalplex, becoming quite the master of step aerobics. The fitness classes were really well scheduled not just for students on campus between 8 and 4 but even offered classes into the evening for us grad students who practically lived on campus. I was disappointed that the cardio machine area was not part of the student athletic fee, so I began to run for free on the 1/6 mile track amusing myself in various manners while pounding out 30 laps (5 miles) several times a week and turned up my nose at the aerobics bunnies who are slaves to the aerobics schedule. I left the gym again when I started running outdoors in 2003, intrigued by the leader of the new run club and in order to train for my first half-marathon in 2004. I got addicted to training for marathons and did it for 5 years straight, petering out, as you know, last year.
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So I’m back to the gym, big bad Fitness World of hard sells to increase membership and charging even after you’ve quit.
For the past five years, I’ve lived within ten minutes of a fairly decent gym and I currently work within ten minutes of the same gym with the gym literally on my walk home–I don’t even have to walk a block out of the way. Why haven’t I joined in all these years??
My new routine is, several times a week, I fall out of bed (to the car horn sound on my iPhone, if you have to know; my regular alarm radioactive meltdown cacophony), pull on some gym clothes, and yawn while warming up on the treadmill at 7 a.m. The treadmills that I use face a mirror and I watch my face jiggle, try not to make eye contact with the 80s throwback who does intervals next to me, and yawn from sheer exhaustion. After 30 minutes of cardio (I’ll get around to trying elliptical machines), I use the circuit training weight machines in the Ladies’ Fitness area for 25 minutes and then I’m satisfied and return home, still trying to stifle a yawn. My body thanks me.