New gym

The three-month gym Groupon that CP and I used to get through this harsh CT winter ran out last week. I have been running more outside, but still enjoy doing strength training and other cardio indoors, so we went on the lookout for a new place. CP thought about staying on at the Groupon gym, but I wasn’t a huge fan. It was a smaller gym which was fine, but there were only three treadmills and one looked like it was from 1980. EVERYONE loved using the treadmills so it was sometimes hard to get a workout in.

Because I had just signed up for the half marathon training program, I was thinking that I would hold off on joining a gym until after the race in June. But CP still needed a place, so I went with him to visit the closest gym to our house. I wrote about this gym before we moved into our house because I thought that it was so cool that they have water bikes and water treadmills. CP and I never ended up signing up for it though because we were trying to save money.

So two nights ago CP and I toured the facility. They have a large lap pool kept at a cool temperature that had at least 10 lanes. The two local high schools use it, which may mean it would get busy over the winter, but their seasons just ended so we wouldn’t have to worry about that for a while. In addition, there is another large pool that is used for lap swim, swimming classes and kids play. It is heated for seniors and kids (aka the pee pool). In addition to the two large pools, there is a huge hot tub and a workout facility with treadmills, bikes, ellipticals, weights, Bosu balls, etc.

As soon as we saw the place, we were sold. It was only a few dollars more to do a family membership instead of just CP so we decided to add me to the gym too. I was psyched.

Despite being tired all day long at work and having to sit through an all-day training, I was ready to head to the gym after work last night. It wasn’t too traumatizing to put on a bathing suit (although I did have to make sure that it fit before leaving the house), but I hoped that no one was looking at my thighs too much. I ended up doing 45 minutes in the lap pool. It was a combination of running, kicking while using the kickboard and a few laps of breaststroke/backstroke/sidestroke. Quite a nice workout, but I have no idea how many calories I burned because my bodybugg can’t go into the water. :-(

CP used to be a swimmer in high school so he is really excited to have such a nice pool. They even have a Masters team, so maybe he would sign up for that once he got back into swimming shape? He is also going to have to help me with my strokes. I thought that my swimming strokes weren’t that bad, but according to him, they are totally wrong. CP trying to teach me is either going to be a good idea or a terrible, awful idea. We’ll see!