In which I go to a gym..

Reason #9283049823 that running is awesome:  it liberates me from having to go to a place like this for my workouts.

I'd never been to a non-university-based gym before, and last night I went into an Urban Active.  This is a gym chain that's around here... and all of the locations are these HUGE mass-produced glass suburban monstrosities of buildings....if a gym could feel like a fancy wal-mart or any other cookie-cutter style thing, these certainly do.  They generally represent most of what I hate about suburban sprawl.

The people inside were what really sealed it for me though... everyone in there was clearly there to see and be seen.  If this is how gyms are, no WONDER America has such an obesity problem... even at my size I felt self-conscious in there and I'm even pretty slim now, thanks to training.  There's no WAY I would want to go there to work out if I were even a little overweight.  There were all these rail-skinny girls wearing next to nothing and (unattractive) bulked-up men wearing Under Armour, etc.  I thought a gym would be full of friendly awesome runner-esque people working out but instead it was like ...where all of the former "cool kid" frat/sorority types end up.  And even beyond the meat-markety feel, the focus didn't actually seem to be on health and fitness... the gym has a ton of tanning beds and most people were really orange and/or made up and eating all kinds of processed junk.

So yeah, running is for me.  I'll take the trail and friendly runners any day.  Plus running seems so much hardcore than stair-machining away while wearing mascara.

Anyway, the facility itself was pretty awesome, once I got over my culture shock.  It had a saltwater pool for lane swimming.  My friend has guest privileges and started teaching me how to do flip-turns so soon I'll be lap-swimmin' like a pro!  I'm excited about that.  I was terrified of trying to do flipturns because I thought I'd end up with a bunch of water in my nose, but it really wasn't that bad.  I'm not quite doing them right yet, though, but you gotta start somewhere.

So I'm not too good for Urban Active, nor can I fully profess to hate it if I liked their pool.  Salt water was nice.  But .. yikes.