Fitness Bound

You’ll notice that most of my material right now is running a little low in the teaching category.  There’s a good reason for that:

I’m not in school.  Duh.

I started this blog to get a fresh start, stretch my writing legs, and postulate on more things in my life than just running.  Well, when you’ve taken a self-imposed sabbatical from doing anything dealing with school, you start running out of material.  And, just when I thought I was going to run low on blogging material this summer, the family and I made the jump to improve ourselves and join a health club.   Yeah, there’s no shortage of material anymore.   Let’s just start at the beginning, shall we?

My wife had been interested in joining a club for herself for awhile now, but we never really followed through on it.  The health club subject came up again and we started doing our research.  My conclusion was that shopping for a health club….I’m sorry….fitness center, was like shopping for a car.  You get the sales pitch, you get to kick the tires.  Hell, if you’re lucky you get a 3, 5, 7 day pass to try it out in regular traffic.  The only difference is is that the salespeople wear wicking material and are much better looking.

Anyway, we were getting a little discouraged (dingy, creepy, too overpriced, etc.).  As a last chance, we decided to go to the  new mega-gym in our little part of suburbia to see what it was all about.  I had always regarded this gym with genuine curiosity.  What the hell is this place?  Do you need 150 treadmills?  We drove into the parking lot and it was like finding a spot at the mall the day after Thanksgiving.  I thought it would be funny to circle the lot until I found a closer spot, but that would be self-defeating now, wouldn’t it?

My mindset throughout this whole thing was, “I don’t really need a gym.  I’m good with my running and I can get some cross training done in our fitness center at school. If my wife wants a single membership, great.  I’ll stick with what I know.”

…and then I walked in.

It was huge.  It was bright.  It was immaculate.  And this was the part in the day where most of the after-work traffic had come and gone.  ”OK”, I thought, “you still don’t really need a gym.  My wife will love it, though.”

After getting a tour, we decided that…hell….even I could work there and sell this place.  It was that impressive.  What sold me, you ask?  Honestly, it started with the kids.
Lots of stuff for the kids to do.  Oh, and look at that, maybe the kids could jump in the lap pool, maybe throw some weights around.   You know, the kids could do that.

Maybe the kids will get more cross training in now that the kids are paying for it.   That’s the theory anyhow.

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