10 April 2015

Right now, we have two gym memberships, plus the Spouse Thingy has a membership at a rock climbing gym. You'd think we'd be in awesome shape, but no... Having gym memberships does not equal using those memberships. We have not been using the membership to the gym that's literally a 10 minute walk away, nor has he been rock climbing.

To be fair, he hurt his shoulder right after joining the rock gym, and hasn't been able to manage it.

But the gym around the corner? I never really bothered because it doesn't have the one thing I really needed: a pool. It has everything else (though in short supply) but no classes whatsoever. The machines and giant bouncy balls didn't really interest me, but going back to the old gym with the pool didn't, either, because actually getting a lane in that pool was a crapshoot.

It was big enough to have 4 lanes open all the time, but they only kept 2, and the rest of the pool was left for people to lounge around and for kids to play in.

I grasp the concept of family gym memberships, but I really hated dodging kids that wouldn't stay in the open area and kept darting in front of me, and I really hated having some blonde bubblehead yell at me because my swimming was getting her kid--her kid who was in the water--wet. After a few too many times of waiting over an hour just to get a lane and then having to deal with kids (whom I do not blame; they were just being kids), I gave up. We canceled that membership and joined the gym around the corner.

The gym I never went to because...no pool.

On Tuesday we sucked it up and went to check out another gym with a pool that's part of the same chain as the gym with the kids and DON'T GET MY SNOWFLAKE WET WHILE HE'S PLAYING IN THE POOL airheads. I knew it would also offer family memberships, but it's a much bigger gym so I had hopes that they would actually have 4 open lanes, at least most of the time.

It turned out to not only be bigger...it's HUGE. Circuit training, free weights, resistance weights, cardio equipment...all in much bigger rooms and there's a lot more of them. There's a racquetball court. Basketball court. Classes. Tennis Courts. Hot tub.

And three pools.

Seriously, 3 pools. One is a 6-feet deep pool used for aqua classes. One is a more shallow pool where people can splash and play. And the big one is a 6-lane, no-kids-allowed lap pool.

Hell, yes, we joined.

Swimming is probably one of the things I need to be doing for my back and hips, and I should have no trouble getting lanes here. I intentionally went at lunch time today, when the other gym was packed and there was no hope of swimming, just to see how bad it was. There were 4 lanes open when I got to the pool, and a ton of kids in the play pool, and that suited me just fine.

I am slow in the water, very slow, but after swimming on Wednesday and then again today, I'm pretty happy.

And hungry.

And peeing a lot.

Holy hell, swimming makes me pee a lot.

But one of the oddest things making me happy: data. I bought a Garmin Vivoactive (yes, I know, another activity tracker. I like toys! And I got it at a substantial discount!) and this sucker tracks a lot. Not only steps, but it will track runs and walks using GPS (so I get nifty maps) and will track indoor runs and walks on a treadmill, it will track bike rides (again, nifty maps!) and it's waterproof and tracks swimming.

This is just a small portion of the data I get. I set up today to do 150 meter intervals, and I can get a total breakdown of each one: how many strokes each 25 meters takes, how long the 150 meters takes, average times and graphs to make it all look pretty.

Totally digging the data, even though it proves how slow I am.

I don't really care about my speed; right now I'm focusing on getting back to the distances I was swimming a few years ago.

All right, I'm not sure I can get back to what I was doing in Ohio--6000 meters--but I'm pretty sure I can get back up to 3000, which is roughly what I was doing a couple of years ago. I started out with 1100 on Wednesday and did 1350 today, I might shoot for 1500 Sunday.

I technically could have hit 1500 today, but I was moving like molasses at that point and figured I might as well give myself a goal for this weekend.

I might be done peeing my brains out by then.