Tag Archives: fitness

Moving my preggo booty

With the exception of Christmas weekend and my sick day last week, I’ve achieved my goal of getting to the Y three times a week since I rejoined in mid-December.  Part of my workout is getting to the gym.  It’s 3/4 of a mile from our apartment, which is a distance that I absolutely refuse to drive.  If the weather is so bad that I cannot walk there (which is very rare), I just don’t go that day.

Most days, I alternate walking and running on the trip there.  Other than the walk/run to and from the Y, my workouts mostly consist of weight lifting, though I’ve thrown a couple of Zumba classes into the mix.  The first class was a disaster, with my uncoordinated limbs all over the place, rarely in-sync with the instructor.  I went to my second class last night, and it went much better.

I’m not a complete Zumba newbie.  In fact, I bought the video tapes back in college, when Zumba was relatively new.  After my embarrassing debut at the Y class, I searched for the tapes so I could work on my moves in private, but they’re nowhere to be found.  Fortunately, Zumba is a great cardio workout, and it’s FUN — like one big dance party — so I’ll just keep going to the classes and work on my skills there.

Tiny Choices just posted on the environmental impact of gym exercise:

. . . there’s not much of a contest that exercising at the gym is probably not the greenest way you can exercise. . . . in general [a gym] is a large open space that is kept brightly lit and heated/ventilated at all times. That is a huge energy sink!

Fortunately, they did not conclude that gyms are a bad thing to be avoided at all costs, and they give some helpful suggestions for making your gym-going as green as possible.  For me, the fact that I am paying for a gym membership is definitely a motivating factor — I want to get my money’s worth!

Anyway, after the decidedly sedentary start to the beginning of my pregnancy, I’m very happy to be getting some regular physical activity.  I’m looking forward to continuing to use my bike for transportation on the weekends, but that’s a bit limited due to weather and road conditions this time of year, so for now, the Y is a great option.

Y not?

So, after hem hawing around for a couple of weeks, or more like a month, given the date on this post, I finally bit the bullet and [re]joined the Y yesterday.  This involved some serious bundling before the 3/4 mile trek from my apartment.  The conditions were about as blizzard-like as things can get with only an inch of snow — the wind was doing its best given the paltry amount of precipitation available.

Properly dressed, the walk wasn’t bad at all, and I probably spent less time outside than some people spent scraping their cars.

I made immediate use of my new membership with about an hour of weights, upper and lower body.  My goal is to hit the gym three days a week — Fridays, Sundays, and one weekday evening.

I returned home to lunch #2 (I ate a small snack, AKA lunch #1, before the gym), leftovers of a fabulous soup that I made on Friday night.  After a bit of a cooking hiatus, I’m back in the swing in the kitchen — more details to come, including a recipe or two.

Physical inactivity

Not even sure where to start with this one, but it basically goes something like this.  I went away to college and spent a few months not doing much in the way of exercise, other than walking all over the beautiful Notre Dame campus going to classes and such.

At some point not quite halfway through freshman year, I discovered the beautiful (and FREE) fitness center, where I spent significant time over the next 3.5 years (especially after I got a job there).  I enjoyed nice balanced workouts with cardio (I was the elliptical queen) and weight lifting.  Thanks to good weight training instruction in high school, I was not intimidated by the machines, free weights, or disproportionate number of males on the weights side of the fitness room.

Grad school also brought “free gym” perks and a small, but adequate, fitness facility right in the basement of the public health building.  After I graduated, I even ponied up for a staff membership, since I continued to work in the same building.  I think it came out to around $20/month, which I didn’t quite appreciate for the bargain it was.Continue reading “Physical inactivity”

Open Streets in St. Louis!

Open Streets is coming to St. Louis, with four events from May through October!  The first Open Streets takes place this Saturday, May 1, from 8am to 1pm.  This great event features five miles of city street from Forest Park to Busch Stadium open exclusively for bicycles and pedestrians (i.e., non-motorized traffic), with lots of fun activities along the route.  Click the image above to go to the official website for more details and a route map.

Sadly, I will miss the inaugural event this weekend, but I plan to volunteer at all of the others.  To sign up as a volunteer, visit the St. Louis Regional Bicycle Federation website.  View this Trailnet blog post for more information on volunteering and the event in general.