As part of my therapy for the stress fracture I’m not allowed to run at the moment but I am allowed to use a stationery bike (and hopefully tomorrow I get the go ahead to use an elliptical) so last week I joined a gym as I don’t have a bike or elliptical at home. Planet Fitness were doing a good $10 signup and no minimum term and $10 a month which seems pretty good – the only downside is that they don’t have a pool, but to join a gym with a pool would cost an extra $80 a year so I opted out for that at the moment.
Anyway, I’m currently doing 30 mins of biking and getting about 8 miles on the bike each time I go – increasing every visit which is a good sign. I’m also starting to use the weight machines but that’ a bit intimidating as I have no idea what I’m actually doing or how much weight to use on the machines – but slowly learning.
The gym plays music over the sound system – thankfully it’s not the radio so no ads (especially political ones). The funny thing is that a lot of the songs that they play are 80’s or 90’s that I like but today it seemed that most of the songs they played are also songs that have been mashed up with different songs by the (recently discovered) DJLobsterdust and Wax Audio sites. It’s very weird listening to the songs as they were originally intended as opposed to the mashed up versions.
One of my favourites is Stayin’ Alive in The Wall –

Tomorrow I go back to the doc again – hopefully not to get a ‘carry on doing what you are doing’ speech, lasting all of 2 minutes and costing $70 but get the go ahead to start using the elliptical. My knee still occasionally hurts though (although strangely enough they both hurt – not just the one with the stress fracture) so we’ll see what he says.
This week was also the anniversary of my first race, the Tyler Burchett 5k run – October 29th 2011 seems such a long time ago. Although it was “only” a 5k – it was the goal that kept me motivated to run. It was also a charity race for a friend so had a special meaning to it too. I was originally intending to do something special to mark the anniversary but totally forgot until the day after – oops!