Week 1 Roundup

So, I’ve spent a week at the new gym. I’m not fully moved over yet, as I’m still doing 2 training sessions a week at the old gym, but I have been to the new gym 4 times to swim and do aquafit.

I’ve been doing fairly well with the swimming, though I’ve been getting there later and later every morning and thus getting less distance in, so I need to turn that around a little. I’m having trouble just getting a routine in place for the new gym, and I keep doing things like making wrong turns on the way there that push me later and later. Still, with the swimming before aquafit and then the aquafit, I think it’s a pretty good workout.

That said, my reaction to Monday’s Aquafit class was: Worst. Aquafit Class. Evar. The instructor was a substitute and probably not used to teaching a combined deep/shallow class (which is kind of inherently a weird concept since they are so very, very different) so she mainly taught a shallow water class and every 5 minutes, she’d come running over to the deep end to tell us if we couldn’t do something, to just jog on the spot.

And then, Wednesday’s class was marginally better, different instructor, who paid more attention to the people in the deep end of the class. It was still not a great class — no focus on technique, no intervals, no exercise sets — but at least I felt like we were doing something.

Then, Friday’s class: Worst. Aquafit Class. Evar. I’m not sure the Friday instructor even realized she had a deep water class. She stood at the shallow end of the pool, where none of us in the deep water could even here her, and didn’t look past the first third of the pool at any point. Beyond that, it was simply a boring class, even if you could follow it. Do this for 2 minutes, followed by do that for 2 minutes, followed by another thing for 2 minutes.

Today’s class, which I took in the shallow end, was a much better class in general. She had more focus on technique than I’ve seen from any instructor in Toronto (which means about 1/4 the amount you’d get from the worst instructor in Prince George) and a limited attempt at setting the exercises. I’m not sure how I’d have felt about it if I were in the deep end, but I think it was definitely the best of the bunch. This may be because the weekend crowd is different and younger and thus more able to handle a more complicated cardio class, I’m not sure.

Notes from the Gym

I went in this morning and signed the papers to dissolve my contract with Strictly Fitness this morning. The conversation happened at a very high volume, but only because they were jack-hammering up the cement floors in the hallway, and not because the transaction was otherwise problematic. Linda was perfectly happy to just fill out the form and let me leave. I probably should have been dealing with her in the first place.

It’s kind of sad that I’m probably going to escape that gym right around the time they finally finish the damned renovations, so I’ll be suffering through them for nothing. Today while I was doing sit-ups, a construction guy came over and started pulling nails out of the floor about 8 inches from my head. I just kind of looked at him in shock and he said ‘I’ll only be a minute.’ I wanted to yell at him, but it didn’t seem worth it, so we just moved somewhere else — and we finished before he did.

I did complain on the way out the door, but Linda said there’s just nothing they can do, the guys on the job don’t have the common sense god gave a gnat and while talking to them about one specific thing will get them to stop, it doesn’t stop them from doing 10 other stupid things in the next hour.

My last day will be March 2nd, and my last payment went out yesterday. It’s nice to be feeling free and clear of that obligation.

This is the first day of…

…February.

It was also my first day at my new gym. I got up early (oh god, so early) and went in to swim laps before aquafit class.

I didn’t quite get a full kilometer in, because I spent too much time dithering about my lap times and trying to calculate how many 18 meter laps I needed to swim to reach a kilometer (55.555,  in case you’re wondering) and how to best break that up in appropriate sets (4 sets of 14 laps each, with resting laps on the 4th, 8th and 12th, in case you’re wondering) and how I could have been so stupid as to forget my water and how exactly one manages the weird two-locker system they have going on at my gym and how I could have been so stupid as to forget to eat before class. But 900 meters isn’t bad for my first day swimming in a few weeks anyway.

Then I took the aquafit class which as epically lame. But she was a substitute instructor, so I’m hopeful that the regular instructor will be better. I do seem to have traded old Russian women in for old Italian women, but the old Italian women do seem to actually try to do the workout, lame though it might be.

I’ve also been slacktastically failing to bother tracking my food since I went home for Christmas, so I’m back doing that, as well.

Also, for the benefit of those who missed it on Facebook, my old gym has agreed to nullify my contract once I finish up my personal training sessions.

+/-

So having talked to 5 new gyms, I’ve narrowed it down to 2 choices.

The first is the Columbus Center at Lawrence & Dufferin. The second is the University City Recreation Center at Finch & Sentinel, also known as the ghetto gym.

Columbus Center		UCRC		Advantage?
Pros	Cons	Pros	Cons
$47 / month		$47 / month		Tie
Will cancel for a move w/ 30 days notice	Annual Memberships only	Monthly, quarterly, semi and annual memberships.		UCRC
Towel service available	Towel service either $1 per towel or bumping up to $85 membership which doesn’t offer much else I care about		Not sure they even offer towel service	CC
Katya works there, and while she couldn’t be my trainer, she could help pick my trainer	Personal training $55-65 / session	Personal training $40 / session		UCRC
	7 km / 10 minutes (really more like 15)	2 km / 5 minutes (really 5 minutes )	98 stop signs in those 2 km	UCRC
Aquafit classes throughout the day, including an 8:30 class with a lane time ahead of it.			Only aquafit classes are at night.	CC
Apparently quite a nice facility, though I haven’t toured it yet.			Probably pretty ghetto, though I haven’t toured it yet.	CC

Going based on costs, it’s a pretty easy win for ghetto gym. But I suspect that I might actually like going to Columbus Center a lot more.

I’m going to have to go to both of them, I guess, and get a sense of how ghetto is ghetto.

Looking for a new gym…

Fun telephone conversation of the day:

Goodlife Fitness Man: I thought I’d call since I find calling easier than email.
Me: Well, okay, but I find email easier, that’s kind of why I sent one.
Goodlife Fitness Man: Well, there’s just a lot of information to go over. A lot of details.
Me: You mean, the sort of thing I’d like to have in writing?

It moved on from there, and actually the information he had to offer was not too bad from a cost/cancellation perspective. It was just, you know, a dumbass conversation.

Conversations with myself:

Sunday, 7:20AM: Oh, god, is that my alarm? Already. It’s not been long enough. Want sleep. Should get up now, so I have time to shower before I go to aquafit class, since hair too greasy to go out in public as is.
Sunday, 7:25AM: Much, much too tired to get up early for something like a shower. Will go to gym later.
Sunday, 7:30AM: No. No shower. No aquafit class. No. Sleep.
Sunday, 8:00AM: Sigh. Sleep! Sleep! Not laying here awake wishing I were sleeping.
Sunday, 8:15AM: Alright, I’m getting up already. Fine. I guess I’ll have a shower now anyway, since it’s freezing in here. But I feel like shit, so I’m still not going to aquafit class.
Sunday, 8:45AM: All showered. Still feeling like shit. So not going to aquafit class. Can go to the gym after the cookie exchange if I’m feeling up to it. (Like that’s going to happen, but I just need to convince myself it will for another 15 minutes and I won’t have to go to aquafit class.)
Sunday, 8:57AM: Hrmm, I feel much better now. That’s good.
Sunday, 8:58AM: Oh fuck. Now I’m showered and feeling better and I still have half an hour before aquafit class.
Sunday, 9:30AM: Grr. Aquafit class.

Sometimes, life just conspires against you. Or for you. Or whatever it was doing. Stupid life.

Things I didn’t know until I knew them…

I was doing one of those internet research study thingies this morning, and it asked me to describe something I was grateful for. I ended up writing that I was grateful for all the friends who support me in my efforts, even though in the moment I might seem bitchy and ungracious about it.

And I wanted to say that here, because writing it to some grad student at the University of Virginia doesn’t really get the message to the people who should really be hearing it.

If you’ve told me I’ve lost weight, or asked me how my workout is going, and I’ve given non-enthusiastic replies, I’m sorry. It’s rude of me to be so ungracious when you’re doing exactly what I need and want you to do, which is taking an interest in and supporting my efforts. I should be nicer and I should be more appreciative.

And you? You should keep doing what you’re doing. I hope I haven’t scared you away.

Conversations at dinner

One of the people at dinner tonight was a fitness instructor at Good Life, and the issue of why she doesn’t do personal training came up. She knew I did personal training and she didn’t want to say, because she didn’t want to insult me, but I figured I’m probably not a typical personal training client, so it probably wouldn’t apply to me.

She says she prefers to deal with the people who come to classes, because they’re self-motivated, while the people who get trainers need the external motivation and she didn’t like dealing with those people.

So, I guess that is me.

I’m just not sure I agree with her value judgment. It was tempting to just point out that if she could only handle teaching people who already exercise and enjoy it to exercise, she must not be much of a teacher, but I don’t think that would have been a fair value judgment on her, either.

So, yeah. I need the external motivation, the external accountability. It’s why I have a trainer. It’s why I have this blog, and my food diary, and my weight tracker and everything else. I can’t trust myself to push through the ‘do not want’ to ‘doing it anyway’. But with a little help from my friends (even the ones I pay $50 an hour), I can make that leap.

So I’m not having fun. At least I’m doing it.

Update Revisited

The one thing I forgot to mention about my trip home:

I had to buy a belt until my mother took in the waist bands on my pants.

An Update

Contrary to the usual wisdom that someone who isn’t keeping their diet blog also isn’t keeping their diet, I actually am keeping my diet for the most part (just ignore those days last week when I was drinking). It’s just that ‘Ayep, I kept my diet again today’ doesn’t exactly make for exciting blog posts, you know?

So, some comments from my vacation, some of which have already been mentioned in status updates, but which I’m recording for posterity anyway.

I missed a few days of exercising while I was away because a) my mother only goes to the pool during the week and b) I had the cold from hell for the first week. That said, I came home 7 pounds lighter than when I went out west 10 days prior, so I’ll take it. I wonder how much of that weightloss was from my body trying to keep itself warm while I was watching curling, but I don’t really care. I’ll take the pounds however they want to come off.

I also managed to come home almost completely free of jetlag. As it turns out, my mother basically lives on my schedule except that it’s 3 hours earlier her time. While I’m in my 9:30 aquafit class, she’s in her 6:30 aquafit class. The only thing is that going to bed at 10pm vs. midnight means an hour less sleep and a lot more exhaustion.

Easily the best moment while I was away was when my mother told me she didn’t think I would be able to swim laps in the 50 meter pool. Admittedly, I had my own doubts on that subject, but hell if I was going to let her be right about something like that. So I swam 10 laps / 20 lengths, just to make a point. Then, in a truly classy move, I rubbed it in all that day and part of the next.

I did try swimming laps with fins while I was there, as well, but man, that was hard. I don’t normally use my legs a lot when I swim and bringing them into play was more tiring. Plus, I had to slow my arm stroke down to match my leg stroke, which meant breathing less. I was moving faster, so 8 laps only took about 1/2 an hour, vs an hour for 10. But by the time I had finished those 8 laps, I was exhausted and had to stop. That, and I butchered my left ankle with the fins, something that took about 5 days to fully recover.

One interesting aspect of getting back was all the comments I got at the gym about having been away. It’s nice to have established enough regularity that my absence was noticed. Plus, on my first morning back at training, someone told me I was ‘really working’ on the treadmill. Given that I was only warming up at the time, I can only assume she doesn’t know what really working a treadmill looks like, but I’m trying to take that as a non-delusional compliment.

General Update and Whininess

So, I didn’t gain any weight while I was in California. I think we can all agree on ‘Go, me!’ over that. I didn’t lose any, either, but that was never going to happen.

The ongoing saga of aquafit now sits at this:

– Aquafit instructor constantly late, wants to move class to later. Boo!
– New Aquafit class added on Wednesday, and given to tardy instructor, thus getting her out of my schedule, since I train on Wednesdays anyway. Yay!
– New Aquafit class on Wednesday cancelled, thus returning tardy instructor to Thursdays. Boo!
– Pool is being closed entirely and permanently effective December 15th. OMGWTFBBQ!

I am not okay with this. I spend 4 days a week in the pool — 3 aquafit classes, 1 day of swimming. And the one day of swimming is the only exercise I get that I actually enjoy.

I am going to try to void my contract over this, but then the problem becomes where do I go from here? There are other gyms in this area that have pools, but I’m rapidly running out of time to sign 1 year gym contracts, given that about a year from now, I plan to be living a hell of a long way from here. I also have 30-some-odd personal training sessions left that I’ve pre-paid for at this gym, and much as I rag on her a bit, I like my trainer, and I don’t particularly want to go find someone else.

I’m finding this really, really hard to take. Like, spent most of today’s aquafit class trying not to cry hard to take. It’s really not been easy for me to make working out part of my life, and I’m not sure my commitment will survive this.

Aquafit

I have some bits and pieces I’ve been meaning to post but haven’t had time for, but I wanted to make a general update on the aquafit situation.

Thursday aquafit instructor is apparently being moved to Wednesday and someone else will be teaching on Thursday instead. It’s not clear whether someone else is teaching at 9:30 or 9:45 yet, but hopefully whenever the class starts, they will be punctual.

Thus concludes the saga with a sort of non-victory for anyone.

Tears rained down…

Okay, so they didn’t so much rain as water slightly until I wiped my face with a towel, but I was definitely crying at the gym today, and Katya felt really bad about it.

I didn’t hurt myself or even over-exert myself, but I’m always slightly afraid of falling down, and doing squats on top of a bosu ball was only very slightly likely to work.

We started out trying to do them with the platform side down, which is a little more stable, but I couldn’t get my feet into a position where I didn’t feel like I was going to turn my ankles. So then we tried doing them platform side up, and I was able to do the squats, but when it came time to get off the ball, I couldn’t find a way to do it that didn’t make me feel like it was going to tip over and I was going to fall and hurt myself and embarrass myself in front of the whole gym.

And I ended up afraid, and embarrassed, and embarrassed about being afraid, and afraid of being embarrassed, and it was all bad. So when I finally did manage to get my feet back on the floor, I was blinking back tears. Katya clearly felt horrible about that, but it’s not really her fault. She couldn’t know how much I’m afraid of falling nor that I’d be able to do the exercise itself and then flub the dismount.

Still, I don’t think we’ll be doing that one again, ever.

More on Aquafit scheduling

So, Stephanie, who is the scheduler of all fitness classes at the gym also teaches Tuesday Aquafit. And as she often is, she was late.

So, at the end of class, she was talking about how she’s managed to convince the gym manager to add another morning aquafit class to Wednesdays, starting after the long weekend. So someone else brought up Nicole’s idea about moving her Thursday class to 9:45 or 10 because Nicole can’t make it to work on time.

Stephanie thought that sounded like a great idea, and I think now she’s probably going to move all the morning Aquafit classes to 9:45 so GRRRR to that.

But even more GRRRRRRRRRR to the fact that on the way out of the pool, one of the other class members mentioned that a couple of years ago, all of these classes started at 9:00. But the instructors were always late, so they moved them to 9:15, so they didn’t have to leave right during rush hour to get there. But the instructors were always late, so they moved them to 9:30, so that rush hour was pretty definitely over by the time they had to leave. And now they’re proposing to move them to 9:45.

It seems pretty clear to me that the problem here is not with the time that the Aquafit classes are scheduled for and that moving them is thus not going to be much of a solution.

Scheduling

So, I was going to the gym 7 days a week, and that was working out okay, except that I was pretty tired much of the time.

So then, the doctor suggested I take at least one day a week off, and Katya agreed that would be not a bad idea. It concerned me a little because I do need the gym to be just something I have to do, and not something where I “decide” if I’m going or not, because let me tell you, if I have to decide every day, I’m not going. But between the tiredness and a lot of achey muscles, it seems like a good idea.

But then cut to yesterday, when I didn’t go the gym, and also didn’t sleep all night. I can’t help but wonder whether if I had gone, I would have gotten tired and fallen asleep instead of staying up until 2AM and then tossing and turning until 4AM.

A friend suggested I could go to the gym on the 7th day anyway, to keep up the habit, but just walk slowly on the treadmill instead of really working out. That would possible solve the habit issue, and the ‘being tired all the time’ issue, but possibly not the ‘not tired enough to sleep’ issue. Which may in fact be mutually unsolvable with the tired all the time issue, unless of course I just indulge my TylenolPM habit.

So, all in all, I dunno. Is it better or worse to take a day off? What about a slack day instead of a day off? Anyone else have any thoughts?

Practice Makes Perfect

Ha, Katya wanted me to support myself on my elbows and toes above the floor as long as I possibly could today. She was not expecting good things, I gathered, by the fact that she suggested that ‘even if it’s only 2 or 3 seconds, that’s okay’.

Little does she know that that was the rest position for one of the exercises I was doing while I was walking. Of course, I never mastered those actual exercises — but the rest position, I figured out.

She was more than slightly surprised when I could hold it for 30 seconds.

In which your hero pisses off her entire Aquafit class at once…

So, in an entirely unsurprising turn of events, given that Aquafit instructors at my gym are routinely late, today, our Aquafit instructor was late.

Very, very late.

She apparently can’t get their any earlier because she has commitments elsewhere earlier in the morning and traffic is just so horrendous that she can’t possible arrive in time for class. So then she wanted to know how we felt about rescheduling the class until 10AM.

I pointed out that that would not be acceptable for me, that 9:30 is already later than I’m really comfortable with, and that if she does so, I would have to stop taking the class. Based on the collective reaction to that comment, I can only assume that while I was making it, I unknowingly kicked a puppy.

In my defense, I don’t think puppies belong in swimming pools.

Then, as we were arguing, I pointed out that I am not a morning person, but that I bust my ass to get to class on time every morning so I’m not so disrespectful as to interrupt the instructor’s class and that it’s not entirely unreasonable for me to expect the same consideration from the instructor. The ‘unlike half the people in this class who show up whenever the fuck they want to’ was apparently sufficiently strongly implied that it didn’t sail over people’s heads, so that didn’t win me any friends.

So now I am the class pariah. Which is fine with me, I was the class pariah before this all started, too, because I don’t stand around and talk in Russian, on account of a) I don’t drag my ass out of bed and to the gym every morning in order to stand around and chat and b) I don’t speak Russian.

I guess, given the choice between them moving the class to 10AM and having it start on time, and leaving the class at 9:30 and not having it start on time, I’d rather they moved it. Then I can just admit that the class is not at a time that works with my schedule and find something else to do on Thursdays. It would be too bad, because I actually think the class, which is stretching focused, is valuable, and it also counts as a sort of rest day, since it’s got no real cardio or strength components, and replacing it with some other form of exercise will not fit quite so well with the rest of my schedule, but I’ll cope.

Conversations from the change room…

Person #1: You look relaxed.

Easy: Are you sure I don’t look exhausted?

Person #1: Well, yes, it could be that.

Easy: That was the most cardiorriffic of any aquafit class we’ve had since I started.

Person #2: No! You think? She’s okay, but Stephanie is more.

Easy: I thought today was really hard.

Person #1: No, I think Stephanie is harder.

Easy (in her mind): That’s because a) you can 15 minutes late to class so you missed half of it and b) Stephanie makes you shut up and actually do exercises while Ashley doesn’t care if you work or not as long as you don’t get in the way of people who are working. If either of you were actually doing any of the things you were supposed to, with anything resembling good form, you would have found them hard.

I went to the gym today…

This, in and of itself, is not much of an accomplishment. Except, of course, that for me it is.

Going to the gym is an accomplishment every single day, with the possible exception of Fridays, when I swim, something I’m starting to sort of like, but it is especially an accomplishment on the morning after a night spent suffering through a really vile episode of food poisoning.

It wasn’t a great workout — I was exhausted and tired and probably low on blood sugar considering I hadn’t actually digested any of the previous night’s dinner and bending over made me queasy, but despite all that, I did go. I did work out.

That’s got to count for something.

Conversations with my Trainer

We were talking about size and weight and whether I was ever at a weight I felt comfortable with, and she asked me what size I wear.

Me: A 32.

Her: 32? Is that like a 16?

Me: No, it’s like a 32.

Her: A 32? Like 16,18,20…

Me: 30,32. Yes.

She did have the good grace to be embarrassed about it, at least.