Givin' it a Tri

In my on-going (and lately unsuccessful) quest to make fitness a regular part of my life, I've finally decided that I need to bite the bullet and just join a gym. I held out on this for a while because we have a little mini gym in our apartment complex, and "free" is a better fit with our much-chronicled grad school budget than a paid gym membership. But after a few months, I've think I've maxed out our free gym's usefulness. There are only two treadmills (one of which is always broken), one recumbent bike, and two elliptical machines. There are some free weights, but one of the two 10 lb. weights went missing about 3 weeks ago, and 10 lbs. is the weight I use for pretty much all of my exercises, so it makes it tough to do much lifting. And everything is about 15 years old. For fear of boring you any further, I'll skip to the point: our little apartment gym is not the kind of place I can get even a teensy bit excited about visiting. And when going to the gym sounds less appealing than scrubbing my toilet, nice facilities, a cool view, or an interesting class make it just a little bit easier to put down my DVR remote and get my butt up off the couch.

Enter Pure Austin. It's kind of the swanky gym in town, but what really attracted me to it is the tagline: "an indoor gym for outdoor people." And it actually lives up to this promise. It has an indoor climbing wall, all kinds of classes, a pool, and-- the coolest feature-- a huge outdoor quarry lake filled with fresh water where you can kayak or swim specific length courses marked off by buoys.
The lake also has a gravel track around it for jogging or walking. So, basically, it's a gym that offers a bunch of sporty activities that are way more interesting and engaging than 30 or 40 minutes on the ol' elliptical machine.

I am particularly excited because I swam competitively for 4 years in high school, but it's been years since I've been in pool for any other purpose than cooling off on a hot day. My knees aren't great, so while I enjoy running, it's not a good idea for me to pound the pavement more than about once a week. I've been wanting to get back into lap swimming, so this is perfect. And, because every couple years I get the itch to indulge my competitive streak, I am thinking that this will be the perfect opportunity to start training for a triathlon. It's something I've wanted to do for a while and since I find myself with plenty of time on my hands here in Austin (my social calendar isn't exactly overflowing-- possibly why I get so excited about grocery shopping as seen here and here), I figure now is the perfect time to start training. I own a bike, I'm already comfortable with running, and this weekend I'm joining a gym with not only a pool, but a place to practice open water swims. It's pretty much ideal.

I haven't figured out exactly which triathlon I'm going to do, but there are at least 3 in Austin in May or June. I'm leaning towards the Danskin women's tri, but in any case, I'll be doing a sprint distance: about a 750m swim, a 10-12 mile bike ride,and a 5K run. (I like a little challenge to motivate me; I don't like intense physical pain and mental anguish.) So there you have it. I'm giving it the old college tri! ; )