I’ve been living in Kenilworth for almost two months now, and what I’ve been enjoying most about it most is the conveniences I have locally. It takes me 4 minutes to walk to Waitrose, 5 minutes to get to Sainsburys/Argos, and there are stores like Boots, Wilko and Robert Dyas within a stone’s throw of both of those supermarkets. There are several coffee shops and lots of pubs and restaurants within a half a mile of my flat, and the railway station is quite literally on my doorstep. Yet it doesn’t feel like living in a city centre, because, well, it’s not a city. A 10 minute run in almost any direction would lead me to footpaths through fields or woodland, and there are two fairly big parks along with several smaller ones dotted around the town too.
That convenience extends to the leisure facilities too. Last week I swam for the first time since early 2015, and tonight I went to the gym for the first time since 2016 (I did go to a networking event in a gym the following year, but that involved no exercise). Both facilities are managed by Everyone Active, and I like the fact that they offer the same pay as you go option you’d expect at a swimming pool in the gym too. At £6 for the gym session I’d have to look at membership options if I wanted to go regularly, but I’m certainly more likely to consider a membership having had the chance to try the facilities on a pay as you go than I would had that option not existed. Many gyms offer free trials, but I’ve always felt an expectation to sign up for a membership after those sessions, and it was pleasant not having that tonight.
The gym reminded me quite a bit of the gym at Lord’s, which was the last gym I used regularly. Whilst it was fairly small, it had pretty much everything you’d need, or at least everything I’d need. I’ve been in gyms with 20 treadmills and 30 exercise bikes, where as this gym was 2 or 3 of each cardio machine and then one of each weight machine. But then there were never more than a handful of people in the gym at any given time, so that wasn’t an issue, and the current booking situation should in theory help prevent overcrowding and waiting for ages to use the specific piece of equipment you want to use.
I went to the gym to add some variety to my cross-training, though that plan was complicated by the fact that I’m running parkrun tomorrow, and given I won’t be able to attend either of the following two Saturdays, I intend to run flat out tomorrow. That meant I didn’t really trust myself to try any of the weights or weight machines, because I know from previous experience that even with very light weights, it’s all too easy to strain muscles if your technique is poor.
So, I stuck to the cardio instead, but again, I was mindful of the parkrun tomorrow. I didn’t want to expend too much energy, and whilst a gentle pace felt very natural during last week’s swim, on the bike in particular I felt like I was really holding myself back with my pacing. The result was I left the gym still feeling fresh, yet also questioning whether it was worth having a shower when I got home, even with a jog home, because I’d barely broken into a sweat.
Moving forwards, I think there is a place for a gym session in my training schedule, just not this place. I feel like I’d need to work much harder to get something truly worthwhile out of the session, but to do that I’d need to move it further away from the weekend. A midweek slot could work well, and if I want to do cross-training on a Friday, then I can still go for a swim instead. That being said, my cross-training experiments haven’t finished just yet, because there are various classes available at the gym I went to tonight, and some of those look worth investigating too.
Scorpo Stories 