myrddyn

reflections from the kiddie pool
2002-11-21 18:24:43 (UTC)

Swimming for Christmas


My parents are getting me a YMCA membership for Christmas.
In our area, none of the 'good' health clubs are close
enough to be practical for regular exercise.

Let me back up--I live and work in an aged city. 50 years
ago, it's main street was a thriving, miniature version of
Michigan Avenue in Chicago, or Fifth Avenue in New York.
Ok, not as fancy as Fifth Avenue, but there were department
stores and a thriving retail industry. Over the years, as
industry jobs declined in neighboring cities, the value of
our homes and neighborhoods declined. As the upper middle
class moved out of the area, so did the retail industry.
All that was left of our one-thriving main street was
second-rate cell phone stores, a once-grand local hotel
turned into a low-income apartment building, a couple of
local restaurants, some lawfirms and banks. Most of the
buildings that had once housed the retail businesses had
converted to office space and stoned over what had been the
storefronts so that at least the buildings looked
professional from the outside.

To their credit, the local banks and lawfirms for the most
part have done well. Our location is still central to
local and federal courts (walking distance to both), so it
is a good place for lawfirms to be.

I live a little south of 'downtown', in a neighborhood that
I would still call middle class.

As you can imagine, most of the 'health clubs' in the area
have picked more upper-class locations. There are really
one two worth talking about, and both are the opposite
direction of work from home.

Now, the city is trying to revitalize downtown. I
appreciate the effort, because it makes downtown a little
safer place to work, and now there is a big grocery store
so I can pick stuff up on the way home if I need to. Also,
there is a new Popeyes Chicken and Wendy's. But in the end
I don't believe it will have the intended effect. None of
these new businesses pay enough so that the surrounding
communities would be improved because of increased per
capita income levels. None of the new businesses in and of
themselves will attract non-local traffic to bring money
into the community. If they don't have something up their
sleeve I don't know about, we'll be exactly where we were 5
years ago 10 years from now, except the empty businesses
will be newer buildings than before.

Finally it is worth it to point out that we are in an
excellent proximity to the closest major city, connected by
one major interstate and a second route by a major
tollway. Both routes have the potential to attract young
professionals from the city looking for more bang-for-their-
buck in cost of living and housing costs, the disparity
being absolutely huge for the cost of a mere 30-minute
commute to dead-center downtown. If I was in charge of the
redevelopment project, that's where I would have started,
not ass-backwards.

That is an extra-long explanation of why I will be swimming
at the local run-down YMCA--there simply are no other pools
of note that are convenient. The Y is about 5 minutes from
the house, although unfortunately still not on an in-
between route from home to work.

You know the drill, if the place you workout is not between
home and work, or within 10 minutes of home, you're not
going to go. Why? Because once you add on 30-40 minutes
round-trip to the time it takes you to change, work out,
shower and get dresses, it's just not worth it to go.

I have also found out about US Masters Swimming, a national
organization the promotes swimming among the 18-and-older
crowd. They include in their focus adults who swim for
competition and just for fitness. Their annual membership
is reasonable, so I figure I'll join for a year and see if
it helps. They provide training advice, discounts on
certain merchandise, and a connection to other siwmmers in
the community through local swim clubs.

My parents think the idea is ludicrous. They think I'm
going to start training to compete again, which they
believe to be beyond nonsensical.

Their attitude has always been that organized, competitive
sports are best just for high school. In college, they are
just a distraction from study. After college they have no
place whatsoever, because that's when you should be
working. That's why they are so pathetically out-of-shape,
becuase they do not have a frame of reference that allows
them to incorporate real fitness into their lives. Them
and my wife, their littering of miscellaneous fitness
equipment throughout their respective houses does little
for them.

Why? Because they have absolutely no comprehension what
motivates people. Only one guy I know is motivated to
exercise just because it's good for him, and that's my
grandfather. Know why? Because if he didn't exercise
because it's good for him, he'd be dead. He just turned 82
and he's the survivor of three heart attacks in the
1980's. He knows how to make it work though--he goes to
the cardiac rehab unit of the local hospital that is a 2-
block walk from the office. He goes almost every day at
lunch for 60 minutes. They record his blood pressure and
weight, and his progress on the machines is tracked. If
you're going to exercise on your own and for your health,
that's the kind of shit you have to do. You have to have a
goal, and you have to track your progress meticulously.
Otherwise, it's too ethereal.

They also cannot comprehend participating in a competitive
sport for fun, unless it is someone else doing it, like my
brother-in-law running a marathon. Great for him, but a
stupid idea for me.

My father, despite his recent 'run in' with potential heart
blockage, does not seem to me to have cut back at all on
his cigarrette consumption. His 'exercise' plan will last
for a while, but he won't be consistent. For as organized
as he is at work, he won't track his progress on the bike,
so his 'workouts' will consist of '30 minutes on bike' or
somesuch. He hasn't done any research on how to organize a
stationary bike workout, I doubt he even really read the
stuff he got from the hospital. I actually think it is
disgusting that he can treat his body so badly and it just
keeps on ticking for him. There are people who do
everything they can to stave off the harmful effects of a
genetic background of heart disease and they still die at
45 of a heart attack. Him? He just keeps subsisting
during the day on coffee and cigarrettes and his horrible
excuse of an exercise plan and he'll probably live into his
70's.

So even though I'm not planning at this point to start
swimming competitively again, I'm not ruling it out. Why?
Because that's the stuff that keeps you motivated. Swim
meets are social, you meet new people with at least one
identifiable mutual interest. You get to know other
swimmers, you have concrete ways to track your progress and
workouts. Fitness is not an activity, it is a lifestyle.
The health benefits are almost ancillary to the fact that
you enjoy the hell out of what you are doing, but they end
up being the most important result.

That's why exercising by yourself at home is not for me a
viable long-term solution, and I don't know of anyone for
whom that is the case either.

My wife, laughably, once again claims she is going to start
using the 'body-blade' thing she bought from QVC a couple
years ago. I don't know if he still does, but Chuck Norris
used to hawk these things. The only reason the thing is
even out of the box it came in is because I took it out.
She has never used it, like every other piece of exercise
equipment in the house she has purchased.

Once she has the kid and gets the summer off, she's going
to take at least one semester and maybe the year of from
teaching if we can afford to swingit. She is going to
balloon, man, mark my works. The women who lose wieght
after pregnancy were the ones who were active before. And
without the activity of school, she will not replace that
with any regular physical activity.

My parents have offered to get her a Y membership with mine
for Christmas, since the additional cost is not too great.
She would rather have a new 'in-between' coat, because she
doesn't think she has a good coat for temperatures in the
low 40's-to-low 50's, just an 'early fall' jacket and a
winter coat. With all the deadpan sarcasm I can muster I
say 'Yippee for what's important'.

And lest you think I am not supportive, or my attitude is
bad, let me tell you that I have done everything I can
think of to encourage her to use the equipment in our house
and to participate in athletic endeavors. Regular journal
readers will remember the bike ride I went on with her
mother, her brother and her mother's boyfriend. I tried to
get her to go. She took a 6-week yoga class with my
mother, once a week, and actually went to most of the
sessions. I tried to be as supportive of that as I could
because I thought it was a great idea. But she bitched the
whole time after every class, and she lamented over the
weekend that she would have to go on Monday. She bought a
yoga mat and in the spring she had bought a yoga DVD and I
got her another one for her Birthday on the foolish
assumption that she had a genuine interest in it. During
the class she did not practice any yoga at home, and she
hasn't done any yoga since the class ended. I think I have
seen the last of the yoga experiment.

The worst thing is that I am afraid our kid will be obese,
or maybe it's the best thing that I am so afraid. I am not
only going to strongly encourage him/her to be active and
athletic but I am also going to try to set an example. And
this swimming program hopefully will be it. I am not going
to get into this half-assed, I am going to make all the
preparations to do it right, to make it something that will
last.

Ok, that's my huge-assed rant. I can't believe you
frigging read this whole thing. What was the point? I'm
going to do this the way I want to do it, and fuck all of
them if they think it is childish or stupid or what-the-
fuck-ever.




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