Row Row Row Your Boat...

Made it to the gym for the fourth time in the last five days...that's definitely not bad at all...

The only downside to working out on Sunday is that the Y I have decided to frequent is only open from 1-6 on Sunday...the other one the same driving distance away isn't even open on Sunday and most of the others either have the same hours or open at 12. The only one that actually does open at 8 am is also the busiest YMCA in all of the Middle Tennessee area...compound the fact that for four hours on Sunday mornings, it's also the only Y open in the Middle Tennessee area...and it makes for something that I really really don't want to go through...at least not for now.

So I waited until the 1 o'clock opening bell and headed into the Y...the good thing I've found about this Y is that it's not really that crowded...at the Y that I used to frequent (the Green Hills Family YMCA), virtually the only time you could find parking was after 8 o'clock PM. Even then, getting an exercise machine was hit-or-miss.

With the Franklin Family Y, I have been 4 times this week at 3 different times of day - 10:30 am, 1:00 pm and 7:00 pm. Not once have I had an issue with parking or with finding an available machine.

But...as usual...I digress.

When I rolled into the Y, I had a plan for once...today, the plan was another 30 minutes on the Alpine Hill on the recumbent bike and to try out the rowing machine.

I hopped on the bike, turned on the IRL race and started rolling up the Alps on level 10 (yesterday I went at level 8)...however, about halfway through, I realized that this was actually too much...I was bordering on the edge of quitting...so I backed it down again to level 8. I figure that I will climb my ways through the levels, spending the rest of this week at level 8 before moving onto level 9 this week. Today, I completed 10.55 miles in 30 minutes and - according to the monitor - burned 254 calories.

After hopping off the bike, I found the rowing machine. I turned on an audiobook on my iPod (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson) and selected a program called "Fish Game". Unfortunately, I had no idea how to play the fish game and after rowing for 5 minutes, I had a score of 0 and I had paid absolutely no attention to my audiobook, so I started over.

This time, I turned on M. Ward's Hold Time and selected a 2000 meter course on the machine...it took me approximately 13 minutes to finish it, but every muscle in my body was sore due to the fact that I was essentially doing squats and resistance training for almost 20 minutes. On Tuesday (which will be the next rowing day), I think I will try the 5000 meter course and finish with the recumbent bike...this definitely seems to be the machine that will work me the hardest...at least right now.

Tomorrow, I will begin the C25K on the crossfit elliptical thingy...after looking at it again, I think "crossfit" might be a brand name, but I'm not positive, so we'll call it a C25K on the elliptical instead. I recognize it's no substitute for the real thing, but probably when I'm done, I'm guessing it will make the real thing that much easier. Basically, the plan is to up my intensity during the running intervals and kind of recover during the non-running intervals. I can actually see this working with the bike, too, but let's do one thing at a time.

Finally, the Y has this program where you get points with every swipe...it's called "My Y Rewards"...you get 20 points with every swipe and there is a website full of "rewards" that you can buy with your points. Most of the stuff isn't too bad...books that you would actually read, DVDs that you would actually watch, some exercise things...I even saw an iPod shuffle. However, every 12 times you swipe, you get to spin a little fake prize wheel that they have. When I started going on Wednesday, I had 32 visits, which meant that I had 2 spins (both just got me 15 more points)...I've been 4 times since, which means I've accumulated another spin on the prize wheel, which I'll be taking tonight. In case your curious, I'm saving up my points to get the new Hank Aaron biography...I have about 20 more visits to go!

Until tomorrow!