86. So strong

Guys we are so strong. I was doing the workout yesterday and I was struck by the fact that at the beginning, I would have never been able to do this. Like at first I really struggled with teh shoulder raises and could never get my arms up as high as Patrick's in the picture and now with a lot of struggling I can do 6 sets of them. That's crazy. The progression of the exercises is so slow/small that I didn't really realize it was happening; I mean intellectually I knew that today we were doing 17 instead of 15 or 6 sets instead of 5 but it never felt like there was a huge jump in hardness. Just a consistent hardness the whole time, although this past week has been really hard, but I might just be working harder in a burst of pre-finishing enthusiasm. But yeah we are so so so strong now!

I also did my homework. I'm starting school in January (I don't know if I told you guys that, but I got in to an accelerated bachelor's of nursing program and so will be doing that for a year and a half) and so I went over to check out the rec center under the guise that I wanted to see if I wanted to buy a membership for the three months before I start school. I was actually pretty impressed. It's brand new, spacious, bright and airy, which is a 180 from the gym I currently belong to (I got suckered into paying a flat rate for like 3 years, because you got a bunch of free personal training (turns out their trainers are jerks)) which is in the basement of a building downtown and feels cramped and stinky. There weren't a ton of people there, but there were some, just your general student types with a few older folks mixed in. There was the gaggle of skinny blondes yapping away while running on the ellipticals, there were some muscle-y looking dudes lifting weights, then a smattering of regular sized to overweight people using various cardio machines, but most of the people were playing basketball and there were two people playing squash or maybe raquetball. I forgot to ask about if I could jumprope there, but I'd assume I could because there was a ton of space. They offer classes too, not just like the normal cardio classes, but kung fu, boxing, ballet, belly dancing, and yoga. Being a member of gym also gets you access to the olympic sized pool and the smaller pool. What I noticed most was that I didn't feel the crippling insecurity that I felt at my gym that usually resulted in me fleeing halfway through my workout. Everyone seemed either very nice or like they could care less about you, which I don't mind at all. I probably won't join before school starts because I'm cheap and can workout at home just as well, but once school starts I might take a class and use the pool and maybe see if I can learn to play sqaush.

So yeah the gym wasn't totally filled with gym bunnies and muscleheads, and a lot of people could stand to get off the treadmill and with a jumprope, but it wasn't all bad and it was nice to see people playing.