Tuesday, February 3, 2009

An unexpected change of plans

I know this is going to sound mean, but I'm going to be selfish for a moment. Some people need to start breaking their New Year's resolutions soon. Because I'm not a fan of the YMCA being absolutely packed when I get there after work.

Every single treadmill. Every single elliptical. Even all the stair masters. Full. Taken. In use. So much for the run I wanted to get in. There was one lone bike open and surprisingly it was the bike I like. So I hopped on, selected the random program and set the timer for 40 minutes.

In a way, it was a workout that kind of mimicked the spin class I toyed with going to tonight. Varying resistance. Varying intensity. I could feel the burn in my legs. It felt good. Towards the end of the workout, after logging 15.8 miles, I happened to notice the treadmills had suddenly become a ghost town.

That got me thinking. Specifically about bricks. One of those bike to run workouts that I hadn't done since, oh, June. The timer went off on my bike, I hopped off, wiped it down and snagged one of the empty treadmills.

I was going to jump back into the world of brick workouts. I figured they've got to start sometime - that whole High Cliff sprint triathlon thing is looming - why not start tonight.

Initially I was only going to do a 10-minute run mostly because I was scared that my legs would feel like a ton of lead. And they did. For about 5 minutes. Then it felt easy to run. So I kept going, eventually logging a 2-mile run. Would have liked to maybe try for 3 miles, but decided to head home instead.

All in all, it was crowded tonight. And maybe that was a good thing. Because if it hadn't been crowded and all the treadmills hadn't been taken initially, I probably wouldn't have done the brick. But I'm glad I did. Because I felt good and am kind getting excited to dive back into triathlon training.

1 comment:

teacherwoman said...

Oh yeah. I am right there with ya. Our gym is not small, but it is not as big as some of those other facilities in larger cities. And right now, we have 2 treadmills down, and a couple bikes as well. It is completely annoying to have to wait to use a piece of machine... grrr.