Finally joined the Gym

Hello Everyone,

Been a while since I blogged - mainly due to time away from home and a nasty old stomach bug that really messed up my eating regime.

The stomach bug pushed down my weight a bit, and I seemed to have maintained that weight - it was ALMOST worth all that suffering!

Today, I decided to finally enlist at my local gym. I love swimming, but at this time of year the pools are full of exuberant children - so it's not a lot of fun for the older generation trying to get in a few lengths for fitness purposes. I am also, I must admit, a bit fussy about changing rooms and pool facilities - and the public pools around here are not that great in that respect. So I wandered off down to the health club near my office to sign up so I could at least get access to a decent pool and nice changing rooms with hairdryers and free shampoo and moisturisers for dried out post-swimming skin.

I was given a guided tour by an enviably slim young lady, who was most kind and encouraging. She was deeply impressed with my weight loss so far and suitably sympathetic about my bad knees! When she took me into the gym itself, the place had a number of people doing scary-looking exercises with medicine balls and weights, I even saw some bloke rolling around on the floor. This was not due to excess alcohol consumption, as is more usual in my home town - my guide informed me that he was indulging in some form of exercise.

I think my guide noticed that I had paled rather at the sight of the scary gym equipment and reassuringly told me that I would be allocated a personal trainer who would make sure that I did not do anything that would aggravate my poor old joints - I have to admit that I was getting pretty worried that I would jump onto the gym equipment and end up with knees like balloons!

I was then taken into a studio that is used for a form of exercise called 'spinning'. The place was full of bikes bolted to the floor. Apparently this 'spinning' involves getting on an exercise bike and pedalling like crazy while being yelled at by a gym instructor. My regular readers will know that I love riding around on my bike - but one look at the saddles on these exercise bikes made me realise that perhaps 'spinning' was not for me. I think I will leave this to stronger and better women than me.

I felt a little happier after checking out the pool and the exercise studio that is used for yoga, pilates and tai chi. A rather intriguing touch was a switch by the door of the studio that said 'yoga mode'. I suppose it pipes relaxing music or something? or perhaps tapes of Tibetan monks chanting mantras to uplift the exercisers?

I paid my money and joined up and tomorrow I will be visiting the place for the first time to have an induction session with the personal trainer, who will work out a plan to get me fit and moving.
Once he has finished with me, I suspect I will be heading for the pool to do a few lengths in a child-free environment, sit in the jacuzzi and open a few pores in the steam room.

Wish me luck!


Keetje