This Is How I Gym

It's Tuesday. I'm sitting in my car at the gym parking lot, eating the Rice Krispie Cookies I had planned on leaving on Renee's treadmill as a joke during our workout. No, I'm not fueling for a long run, I'm just a tad hungry. It seems that convincing my body that it no longer needs 3000 calories worth of Christmas treats is proving more difficult than I thought.

I see Renee getting out of her car so I quickly hide the wrapper evidence and go to meet her. It's just the two of us tonight and from the look on Renee's face, she's wishing it was just me.

It's freezing outside. It's C-O-L-D cold. I'm once again grateful that Renee suggested a winter gym membership and that we're not running outside. Inside the ladies change room we compete for a spot in the 10 square centimeter space around the one tiny heater. We debate staying here for the next hour.

We eventually make our way to the treadmills. I haven't made much use of the rest of the gym and I start to feel guilty about that until I have the same conversation with myself I do every time I come here. You had a stress fracture. You need to be running to make sure your body can handle the half marathon. You need to build your cardio back up. If you weren't at the gym you'd be running on the treadmill at home and this is no different. You signed up at the gym so you wouldn't have to run outside in the cold and chance slipping. Give yourself a break! Then Pitbull starts playing in my ears and I don't hear the rest.

I start my 5 K run. I'm still running slower than I did before the fracture, but I've done several 5 K's now and everything seems to be fine. I decide to up the speed a little for the last kilometer. My lungs are screaming at me, "What are you doing??? I thought we were done with running!" But I survive the ordeal and I realize that I have a long way to go before I'm back to my regular pace. Good thing the half isn't until September. 

I'm getting ready to do some stretching when Renee reminds me that we still have to do the stairs. Last week Renee had this great idea that we should run up and down the stairs as a part of our workouts. I was skeptical because I hate exercise, but I went along with it. We started out small, with two repeats, then three and tonight we jump to five. I'm pretty sure I won't be able to stand up at all tomorrow. 

We finish off the workout with some stretching, which really means we lie on mats on the floor and have a chat. Despite the hunger, cold and lack of interest we had a decent workout. We celebrate with a short dance routine in the change room. We discuss the option of getting tea, but decide we'll do that on Saturday instead, when we have more time and less commitments. 

We also discuss our goals for the winter months. Weight loss? Pace? PB? Distance? All valid options, but we end up setting a goal of .....setting a goal. Sometime in the next three months we will definitely set a goal for ourselves. I'll keep you posted.