Changes

As 2017 begins, it is a perfect time to reconsider how I'm using this blog and to plan my fitness for the year.

Gym Membership

Scott and I have been members at many gyms during our almost 19 year marriage. At almost every place we've lived, our first stop was to find a place to work out!! In Trumansburg, we put in a home gym when we built our house, with the intention to never pay fitness membership fees again. That all changed when I was injured while training for my first marathon. My physical therapist reminded me that at 38 I was no "spring chicken" and needed to focus on flexibility, strength - in short ALL areas of fitness! While our gym could give us a lot, we had settled into a pattern of mostly running and we realized that paying a gym membership would actually force us to use all they had to offer! So we landed in the gym that became like a 2nd home to us for the next 5+ years.

Unfortunately, there's been a recent shake up in the group fitness portion of our beloved gym and we're caught in the crossfire. We adore group fitness and we've come to know many of the instructors well during our time there. I won't go into the drama, but the only choice in this situation for us was to cancel our membership, effective at the end of January 2017.

Dailymile

I've been a member of Dailymile for several years now and the weekend before we cancelled our gym membership I was skiing with Scott and said, "I think I'm going to switch over to Strava effective January 1st. I'm going to cancel my Dailymile account."  Scott moved over to Strava last year, though he kept his Dailymile account enabled for occasional use. I've been on both platforms for a year now and barely cross post at all; using Strava only when I wear my TomTom for running or swimming. As a result, Dailymile serves as my social place and Strava is really not doing much of anything for me. It's ok, but I like how Strava does its reporting and tracking.

While on the lift I pondered more about it. If I know that I'm quitting in 10 days, why keep it now? I should just click delete and be done with it. I credit Dailymile with getting my fitness on track back when I joined. From day one of membership I never missed a workout. I met many people and stayed close with people I may have drifted from otherwise. I would be sad to say goodbye, but it felt like the only choice in that moment.

An Army brat, I'm no stranger to abrupt change, and with the shake up at the gym and some social stresses going on I felt like this was something I could control. A hard break from everything I had been doing seemed in order; sadly Dailymile was a casualty of my current place in life.

The in-between time

Right now I am in between. I'm getting used to using Strava. I miss the community of Dailymile. I am still attending my 2 favorite classes at the gym, but I know those days are numbered. Our gym uses Les Mills classes, and thankfully they offer an OnDemand option. Scott and I signed up for the free 10 day trial to give it a go at home and loved it! On the very day we planned to join, my sister gifted us an annual membership for 2017. I cannot even begin to express my gratitude both to Les Mills on Demand for existing and to my sister for giving such a thoughtful gift. While not a permanent substitute for group fitness, it will help us bridge the gap as we figure out our next steps. I'm already hooked on RPM, GRIT , and BodyBalance.

Thanks to my love of swimming that I got from Total Immersion coach Shane Eversfield, we'll need to find a place with a pool so we'll probably join the Ithaca Y when our membership is up. And, while it will take time to adjust, the silver lining is that we can introduce our kids to racquetball. Scott and I played racquetball together all through college and I am really excited to play again!

And the Blog

If I hadn't abruptly deleted my Dailymile account I could go back and check stats for last year, look and see how I felt about things etc. However, in my haste, I deleted entire years of logging about my workouts. Going forward, I hope to use this Musing section of the blog for more regular thoughts. In many ways I'm excited about this. Dailymile served as a daily fitness journal if you will, and perhaps I'll find it fun to post more regularly.

And 2017

My friend Anne has a great blog where she shares her raw emotions on random topics - not just exercise. Here recent post about New Years Resolutions made me think a bit. I've never been one to have formal resolutions, but each year I add a lot of things that I say I'm going to do regularly. I stick with most of them, because truly what I don't like about the resolution is not the resolution itself, it is not succeeding at keeping it. Some things I'm adding/resolving to change this year include:

• Figure out the "kill" shot: racquetball metaphor for making my fitness count. I hope to put in FEWER hours of exercise for more results. I strive to eliminate "junk miles" from my workout docket.
• Get back into racquetball
• Write 30 minutes daily. Scott and I started this yesterday. Our plan: write from 5:15-5:45 each morning. We'll use E.ggtimer.com to stay honest.
• 10 minutes of Duolingo Spanish daily.
• 10 minutes of meditation daily. Scott and I are using HeadSpace right now.
• Drink a mixture of apple cider vinegar, water and honey before bed. I'm one night in having to plug my nose to get it down and I'm not sure that's gonna take, but I'm optimistically adding it to the list

Anyone who reads this list who happens to listen to or read Tim Ferriss will probably recognize a few of the things on my list. I've been listening to his podcasts for awhile, and Scott bought me Tools of Titans for Christmas and I've fallen madly in love with it!

There are more things, but they are all for my business, Emoticakes, so I won't list them in my personal musings.