Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Adventures at the Community Center

Every other week Coach gives me cross-training workouts that involve running and doing body-weight exercises. To do these workouts I needed to find an indoor track, so I've been going to the Westerville Community Center. The indoor track is a carpeted small oval around the top of a bunch of basketball courts. Every other day the walking/running direction changes. No where does it state how many laps equals a mile.

Oh yeah...it costs me $4.50 each time I want to use the track.

Today it was snowing as I entered the community center. I went to the front desk to pay my fee and the smart-alec manager behind the desk says "why don't you just run outside?" I let him know that I usually do run outside but that my coach assigned me a run that required exercises every thirty seconds. Yeah, that quieted him. I get up to the track and start my workout. It's ten minutes of warm-up followed by 30 seconds of exercise, 30 seconds of jogging. Most of the exercises were running-related but I still looked kinda weird doing them. I would be jogging and then, BAM, I'd hit the floor and start doing mountain climbers. One guy stopped me and asked me what I was doing. I told him my coach was the devil (Hi Liz!). I told him I was a runner and these exercises were making me stronger. He told me he had had triple bypass, a heart attack, and had six stents. I told him it was a miracle he was alive and thank goodness he was there walking. It was good for him. He asked me who I ran for. I was like, "what?" He asked again, "what school did I run for?" I giggled. I told him I was much older than I looked; that I was 30. He he!

As I was approaching the end of my workout I went to consult my piece of paper I brought with me and it had been thrown away. I couldn't find it in the trash. I hope I finished the workout alright.

On paper these cross training workouts look so easily, but they are kicking my a$$! Although it's costing me a small fortune to go to the community center, in the end I know these experiences whether they be fun, tough, or personal are really going to make me better.

2 comments:

Andrea Hill said...

thanks so much for this post! I am in California today for a meeting and I set my alarm to get up and run. It's still dark, and as I was sitting, I was making up excuses (I have a tempo workout today).

But reading about your dedication helps me get over some of that, thank you!

Michelle said...

Good for you. I remember in H.S. practicing for OSUMB tryouts with my dad at my old H.S. field. Since it was summer, there were only a few people out and about, such as at the nearby track, but I did feel like I probably looked pretty wierd. It helps to keep that goal in mind, and gets easier to ignore those looks from other people as you get older, I suppose, too.