Gym Rat Wannabe

Happy 2015! First week of marathon training has been a fail. Squeezed in 8 miles on Tuesday, 6 miles on Saturday and 12 miles yesterday. Was supposed to do an LT somewhere in there, but I've been recovering from a bit of a cold so held off.  It hasn't even been that cold or that there's snow on the ground and am having difficulty trying to get the runs in. Not a good sign which caused me to realize that I probably need to sign up for a gym membership. Whenever I've done winter training before, I've always had the safety net of a gym membership even if I still did most of my runs outside.

The problem being in the past, I hate signing one year contracts since I know that come April, I won't set foot inside the gym until the following December.  Signing up for a membership is kinda like buying a car.  The sales guy is trying to size you up and figure out how much money they can extract from you and you're in there trying to get a fair deal. LA fitness opened up a new place close by to where I live and the good thing is they do month to month, provided you pay an initiation fee.  I went  to visit last week to try and get the sales pitch.

Quite nice place, everything's completely new, plenty of treadmills, classes, squash courts, a basketball/volleyball court and a swimming pool.  I had done some googling around and it seemed the price that everyone has been getting is $100 initiation fee and $40/month which I consider to be fair.  So when I sit down with the sales guy, he shows me the "regular" rate which is $100 initial fee and $70 a month or $200 fee and $60 a month, but because of a sale that have, they are offering it for $100/$50 or $200/$40.  This is a higher initiation fee than what everyone else was getting so I told him I'd think about it.  I kinda realized afterwards, that you have to play hard to get. The first thing they ask you is what are your fitness goals. If you go in and say that you're there everyday and use all the machines and play squash and basketball and swim, they will try to charge you more because they perceive that you think there's value to joining the club and are willing to pay for it.  I had mentioned that I would probably swim and do spin classes and weights and use the treadmill. To be honest, I would have signed up for the $100/$50 option that he offered if I didn't know better since I had decided I was willing to buy 4 months of treadmill access for $300.  In the end, I ended up visiting another LA fitness and went through the same pitch, but said that I only used the treadmill (which is true) and that I had no intention of doing classes or using the pool (maybe not so true) and ended up getting the $100/$40 price which I was looking for so I signed up. The membership is good at all the clubs in the Toronto area so I can still use it at the original club I wanted to.

I haven't actually tried the gym out yet, but it's looking like I may get that chance soon.  The temperatures are dropping down now and though I'm going to try and do the outside running thing ( i even bought some more winter gear), it's nice to have the option of running inside once again. Also it's been a while since I've swam so that'll be something I can look forward to.