We Made A Mistake

Yesterday morning I woke up, ate a bar, and went back to bed. Today, however, I woke up, ate a bar, and headed to the gym. Laura and I planned to use one of our fitness passes and try out the Bally's gym. She said that she really needed to ride a bike and I figured that any reason to get me to a gym was a good one, so we agreed to meet this morning.

Except that she told me that she was running late and then had a few issues that prevented her from getting to the gym for quite a while, so I just did my workout on my own. When I was first signing in, the guy at the front desk said that the locker room was in one direction and the pool was in another direction. Ugh. Pool? And then he said the magic words "hot tub"! Double ugh. So, now, because it didn't say on our fitness pass that there was a pool and I didn't go to the website to double check, we've now potentially wasted a pass with a hot tub!

The pool actually looked nicer than the one at my regular NYSC. Or, I guess I should say that it appeared to be 25 yards instead of 18 yards, which made it look a lot better in my mind. The rest of the gym looked a little run-down. All of the cardio equipment looked a little bit older than at NYSC and at NYSC there are individual TVs at each machine. This Bally's only had TVs scattered around the gym. I don't really watch TV at the gym, so it wasn't really a factor for me.

I started out on the stair mill. I figured I'd give it a shot and see how it worked. The downside of older equipment is that there isn't a spot to set your iPod on the equipment, so I had to hold onto it myself. (Actually, I happened to be wearing tri shorts, so I was able to stick it in my side pocket). I picked a random hill climb setting on the stair mill and off I went climbing stairs. I was able to do okay - I did have to turn the level down one so that I wouldn't have to hold on with my left arm. And then, all of a sudden, the machine stopped after 5 minutes and said, "Goal Attained!" I figured that was a sign that I should go and do something else.

There were a bunch of recumbent bikes right near the entrance, so I thought I'd do that while I waited for Laura to appear. I set the timer for 30 minutes and was off to pedal my heart out. I didn't see any bikes that had straps on the pedals, which is a negative in my book. I also didn't see any spin bikes, which would be another negative if I was going to switch gyms permanently. The one thing I really noticed while I was biking today is that this gym seems to run a little hot. Or maybe most gyms do. I'm just more used to having a bit of a breeze from being outdoors I guess. Nothing too exciting to report on the bike front. I sat, I pedaled, after 30 minutes, I got up and walked around a bit.

I looked at the hot tub longingly and then decided I'd do the elliptical until Laura got there. It was also near the front, so I was able to see when she arrived. I waited until I had done 5 minutes on the elliptical and then went off in search of her in the locker room. I showed her the pool and hot tub and then I headed home to shower and get ready for work and she did a workout of her own on a different cardio bike, I believe.

I'm hopeful that Laura and I will be able to meet up either later this week or early next week in order to check out the pool and hot tub situation at this Bally's. Even though I can't swim, Jon suggested water jogging. Not ideal, but I hadn't really thought of it before, so if we go back, maybe I'll give it a shot!

Stair Mill
Time: 5:00
Distance: 0.41 miles
Calories: 49
Maximum HR: 177
Average HR: 171

Cardio Bike
Time: 30:00
Distance: 10.80 miles
Pace: 21.6 MPH
Calories: 278
Maximum HR: 160
Average HR: 152

Elliptical
Time: 5:00
Distance: 0.45 miles
Calories: 45
Maximum HR: 160
Average HR: 149

How Fancy Is Too Fancy?

This morning I met Laura again at the fancy gymnasium, although I got there first because Laura wanted to meet to ride bikes but I also needed to finish up Week 7 of my Weight Lifting book. Since we hadn't checked out any of the cardio or weight lifting equipment yesterday while we were there, I wasn't really sure what we were in for, but I figured that it was such a fancy gym that they'd at least have what my regular gym had.

After checking in and getting all my stuff settled into a locker I headed to the weight lifting/cardio area to check out the equipment. And I honestly wasn't that impressed. For as big as the gym is, I thought that they really crammed a bunch of weight lifting machines into a fairly small area. And while there were a lot of dumbbells (plus over my regular gym), there were not a lot of free weight machines (minus).

This was today's workout, which is still Drop Sets:

Leg Press: 1 set of 12 reps @ 120 lbs / 1 set of 12 reps @ 100 lbs / 1 set of 12 reps @ 80 lbs
Leg Curls: 1 set of 10 reps @ 65 lbs / 1 set of 10 reps @ 50 lbs / 1 set of 10 reps @ 40 lbs
Leg Extensions: 1 set of 1 reps @ 60 lbs / 1 set of 10 reps @ 50 lbs / 1 set of 8 reps @ 50 lbs
Dumbbell Squats: 1 set of 15 reps @ 25 lbs (per arm) / 1 set of 15 reps @ 20 lbs (per arm) / 1 set of 15 reps @ 15 lbs (per arm)
Calf Raises: 1 set of 10 reps @ 105 lbs / 1 set of 10 reps @ 80 lbs / 1 set of 12 reps @ 60 lbs

The leg press machine I had to do on a not-plate loaded machine, instead it was one where you move the pin up and down on the stacked weights. I didn't really love it because the weight increments weren't exactly what I wanted and it's not something you can customize. On the leg extensions, I realized that I forgot to move the pin for the third set of lifting. No wonder my legs were so tired! The dumbbell squats were a lot nicer here than at my regular gym because there were so many dumbbells available, which was a big bonus in my mind.

I normally do calf raises on the leg press machine, but that wasn't an option today since it wasn't the normal leg press machine. Instead, I did them on the plate loaded calf press machine, which I normally don't use. The last time that I did calf raises with Drew, he was using the machine I used today and was lifting 150 pounds. However, he can apparently lift over 300 pounds doing calf raises using the leg press machine. I think he's somehow cheating. I don't know how you can double your weight like that with the different machines. We're going to have a "Pepsi Challenge" soon to see if he can in fact do what he claims to be able to do as I think there is something a little bit fishy about the whole situation.

After doing my weight lifting, I looked around and tried to find the cardio or spin bikes. I didn't see any spin bikes out in the cardio area, which is unlike my gym (minus). Then it was time to meet Laura. We met up and went in search of spin bikes that weren't in the spinning classroom as there was a class going on at that time. We asked a rather unhelpful woman who was working at a information-type desk in the cardio area and she wasn't able to answer any questions about whether or not they had spin bikes not in the spinning classroom or really anything at all.

My gym has one regular and two fancy computerized spin bikes out in the regular area and I guess I just assumed that this fancy gym would have something similar. Wrong. We did find one spin bike that Laura tried out but the seat wouldn't move up or down, so we both hit the cardio bikes instead. I thought that their cardio bike was a lot fancier than the one at my regular gymnasium, but I'll be honest, I mostly concentrated on watching the E! Kardashian Wedding special instead of anything else.

I think also that because my legs were tired from the weight lifting and I was really hoping for better equipment in the cardio area, my heart just wasn't in it. I did a random setting on the bike and switched around between levels 8 and 15 (the highest level was 25). It actually was pretty tough and I do appreciate how cardio bikes automatically adjust the resistance for you, but it wasn't exactly the workout I was looking for.

However, what I was looking for was the hot tub at the end of our workout! It was just such a nice end to the workout and a really nice way to start my Friday before heading to work.

Weight Lifting
Time: 18:40
Calories: 160
Maximum HR: 158
Average HR: 136

Cardio Bike
Time: 40:00
Distance: 8.94 miles
Pace: 13.41 MPH (average)
Calories: 374
Maximum HR: 158
Average HR: 143