Parents, a princess and a pirate

The Break-up

I ended my 2.5 year relationship with my gym, Cardinal Fitness, this week. It actually made me quite sad. I've seen myself go from a couch potato who couldn't be on the elliptical for more then 10 minutes to running 13.1 miles. I'm made some friends, my kids like Gladys, the kids room worker and it's comfortable.

But, my sports doctor suggested adding swimming into my rehab for my hip. Swimming is a zero impact exercise so it's ideal for injury recovery. Cardinal doesn't have a pool. The big huge new gym down the street, LA Fitness, does. I felt like I was cheating just walking into it. But after taking the tour, I saw that there's a whole new world out there! It was like eating hamburger every day of your life and then switching to steak. In addition to the pool, LA also offers all the cardio equipment you could ever want, weights and machines (often time 2 or 3 of the more popular machines), classes that range from yoga and pilates to spinning and kickboxing to latin dance and hiphop. The kids room is nice too (bonus for a bathroom in the kids room so I won't get paged 1/2 way through my workout to take Matthew to the potty). After going through the sales pitch, bargaining my dues and childcare costs down, I signed on the dotted line.

Next I had to break the news to the kids and also break up with Cardinal. The manager, who is a friend of mine, was disappointed but understood where I was coming from. Kylie cried when we said goodbye to Miss Gladys and Matthew actually gave her a high-five (he's not big on physical contact!). I was sad to pull out of their parking lot but secretly excited about my first workout at LA.

So, today after dropping Kylie off at the bus stop, Matthew and I piled in the car and headed off for LA. He loved the kids room right away, which helped me feel better. Then I hit the locker room to change my shoes and ran into a friend who left Cardinal in May! It was great to catch up with her and to get an insiders perspective of the new place. She said I'd recognize a lot of faces, which I did, 6 actually in the hour that I was there. I got in a good workout on the elliptical (my last cardio equipment before being allowed back onto the treadmill next week). I also did legs on the equipment. That was a little tricky because I had to find the equipment, figure out how to adjust it to me and do the reps. But I got it all worked out. Finished up with some serious ab work and I was done. Matthew said he had lots of fun too.

I'm really looking forward to trying the classes and pool. I might do the pool some next week and am planning on a yoga class next Thursday morning. This is going to be good!