I went to the gym today for the first time in over a week. And I feel GREAT! At least I did<\/i>, until the crushing late afternoon tiredness hit me. But that’s why we have coffee, right?<\/p>\n
Sigh, the gym: it’s been the subject of much recent brain activity for me. I’m kind of having crazy mood swings about it, actually.<\/p>\n
I reupped my membership over the summer and nearly instantly regretted it. Mainly because of the cost: MAN, gyms are expensive. In the best of all possible worlds I can get there 3 days\/week (more realistically it’s twice weekly). Aren’t there better things we should be spending that money on?<\/p>\n
But then I relented. Over the past few years it’s become apparent that I feel much much MUCH better both physically and mentally when I get some real exercise on a regular basis, even with all the city walking. Going to the gym is an efficient way to exercise: 30 minutes of cardiovascular work + a few weight machines + stretching + getting there and home = about an hour.<\/p>\n
BUT, besides the ca$h cost there’s the environmental costs of using a gym for exercise, and those have been weighing (har) on me lately. I could switch to swimming, but in the cold weather my skin already has a difficult time remaining on my body without adding chlorine to the mix, thank you very much. I could use a rowing machine, which I think only has a small battery for the display, much less energy hogging than the elliptical machine that I prefer<\/a>.<\/p>\n Of course, I could just switch to an outdoor and free form of exercise, like running. And in fact I live right near a giant park! But I’m a wimp — it’s cold out, and I’d feel weird running with my iPod on because what if a car comes out of nowhere and I can’t hear it to get out of the way? Ditto biking: practically free (well, I’d have to get a bike, but that’s still much cheaper than the gym), but I’m a wimp: I certainly couldn’t iPod while biking, and cars are even more of an issue.<\/p>\n (As an aside, I do plan to get a bike at some point and use it for some very local transportation. At least until I get brave enough to ride someplace far and trafficy.)<\/p>\n Then there’s the time issue: when I get a job, will I ever have time to exercise? In a perfect world I’ll be working at a college with a gym near the library, and could nip over to the gym for a workout during lunch a couple times a week. But there’s no guarantees that will happen.<\/p>\n So I guess, for now, I’ll just stick with my current plan. And maybe the next time I go to the gym I’ll unplug my favorite machine and see how it handles all crunchy + green-like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I went to the gym today for the first time in over a week. And I feel GREAT! At least I did, until the crushing late afternoon tiredness hit me. But that’s why we have coffee, right? Sigh, the gym: it’s been the subject of much recent brain activity for me. I’m kind of having […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}