Getting in shape

I had my first trip to the gym today. Going to the gym was one of those things that I'd wanted to do for a while, and even made some vague plans to do so that never really went anywhere. There were always reasons to not go through with  it, not the least of which was never really having the time for a regular schedule or anything like that with Nick's disabilities. Not to mention my own lack of self-esteem and shyness that meant I was uncomfortable going to a small gym. Also nearly every gym I looked at seemed to have "circuits" to use the equipment, so that you spent only a few minutes on each one. I didn't really like that, because what if I just wanted to stay on the treadmill for 30 minutes one session?

Then I got diagnosed with diabetes, and it became considerably more important for me to lose weight, and so I found and signed up for Pure Gym. Pure Gym is a chain that has a specific hook that got my attention - they're open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you want to turn up for a gym session at 2am, you can do so, and I liked that idea because I can never guarantee when I'll be free to go for a session. The monthly fee was also remarkably cheap for a gym, and so I figured that between the money I'd be saving with not eating as much junk food and some of the royalties from the writing, I could afford to give it a try at least. There was a bit of a delay at first as they required me to get cleared by my doctor before I could start exercising there, but I got that sorted on Friday and promptly booked my induction session after that.

The gym is very nice - large and clean and airy, with more than enough machines for people, even during busy times (which I ended up seeing some of, with people coming in after work). Treadmills and exercise bikes (and Spin bikes which do... something that you can do in classes, I'm not sure what yet but I know the classes get booked up very quickly), rowing machines, cross trainers, a whole load of resistance machines, a weights room, and a lot of extra equipment people can use when working out. Kettle bells and Swiss balls and stuff like that. There's also showers for people to use after their sessions (not to self: remember to bring shower stuff next time). So all in all it's pretty damn good.

So after my induction (basically getting shown round the gym, seeing the machines and getting a 30-second tutorial on how each one worked) I stayed and did my first workout. 20 minutes on the treadmill at a walk (I'll have to slowly increase the speeds there till I find the best one for me), 15 minutes on two exercise bikes (the first one I tried was a bit too tall for me), and one minute on a cross trainer. I didn't like the cross trainer. I kept feeling like I was about to fall backwards on it and that was a pretty distracting and uncomfortable feeling. I also tried a couple of the resistance machines on the lowest weight sessions (10lbs) and they were pretty easy, easier than I'd expected so once I figure out what I need to work on I'll do more of them as well.

Now I'm home of course the post-exercise exhaustion has hit and I expect tomorrow I'll be reminded of all sorts of muscles I'd forgotten I had, but al in all it was a successful afternoon. My plan is to go to the gym at least twice a week, so I'll probably be visiting again on Wednesday or Thursday, and so the only other thing to do is to look into bus routes to the place, as right now getting a taxi there and back is stupidly expensive...