I decided to join my local branch of The Gym Group, they were having a promotion of 50% off for the first month and no joining fee, so I thought I would give it a go.
I main reasons for joining included wanting to start running, but in a controlled environment where I could easily monitor my progress on the treadmill, and also access to weights for strength training.
I joined online on the last day of March, and went along for my first visit on 2 April, but rather than visit the gym as my main workout, I had already done a 30 minute walk with the dog and 14km of rowing before I decided to walk to the gym.
Once there I decided to see what my running stamina was like, as historically I could run for about 6-800m before being out of breath and having to walk the rest of any distance I was hoping to cover. I was pleasantly surprised that I could actually maintain around 5 minute per km pace for 5km and put in a time of just over 32 minutes.
If I can manage that time on a treadmill in the gym, then that should put me in about the middle of the pack for a 5km ParkRun, I just need to buy a suitable pair of running shoes as the badminton shoes I normally wear as trainers have next to no cushioning for running.
It took me a few minutes to recover, but I went on to do some weights and some more rowing, including 2 x 2km sets and a 500m sprint that set a new PB at 1:39.4 and this was after nearly 5 hours of physical activity!
To say I did not suffer from all of that exertion would be a lie, my ankles, quads, shins, abs and biceps all let me know for several days afterwards that I had probably overdone the exercise (no surprises there) it was painful to walk and go up/down a flight of stairs, although the pain eased if I continued with the walking.
On the plus side, all of the muscles I use for rowing appeared to be fine, so I carried on putting in 14km+ each day for the World Erg Challenge.
Another challenge this month is April Fools’ Challenge where you row 1km on day 1 and increase by 1km each day up to 15km on day 15, this one should be fairly easy to complete since I am averaging at least 14km a day at this point anyway.
Most days I was rowing a 2km warm up, 10km whilst watching a TV episode and then a 2km cool down after first taking the dog for a walk.
I visited the gym again on the Monday evening for a ‘deadlift workshop’ which was scheduled for 30 minutes, I arrived early and did 20-25 minutes of reasonably fast inclined walking to try and ease my shin splints before seeing what I could do on the leg press – reached 330lb (150kg) , before I ran out of time and had to find the class.
The class itself included all of about 5 minutes of instruction and then taking it in turns to do 10 lifts of the barbell with 88lb (40kg) of weights, which was then raised to 110lb (50kg) for a second round.
After the class I rowed a couple more 2ks with a 500m sprint sandwiched in the middle, both 2Ks were sub 8 minute times and the 500m was a new PB at 1:38.7 that places me in the 70th percentile
By the end of the week I was on day 9 (9km) on the April Fools’ Challenge and was at 364km for the World Erg Challenge.