Saturday, January 28, 2006

Winter Break


Modena Sporting Club
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.
I'd made a date with Shygirl to go running the other night but the only time that she can go these days is after six o'clock p.m. Here in northern Italy that means it's dark, cold, icy, freezing, and you might find snow on the ground. I could go in the morning or the afternoon by myself but I just hate thinking about her running around that park by herself in the cold, dark night. The forecast was set for snow so I wasn't really enthusiastic about going running outside, however, an hour later there we were going round and round the park in the cold night.
Now this has really been an odd winter. Where I live it generally snows once at the end of january. I mean it's cold and everything, but it's not freezing. This year it started snowing in mid november and I can't even count the number of times it's snowed since then. It's never a lot, maybe a couple of inches, but it sticks for a few days and is really slippery.
I'm pretty hard core when it comes to exercising. I will go under ANY circumstances, but this was getting old. We didn't want to join a gym 'cause I HATE gyms. I'd much rather run in the snow than be indoors. On the other hand we both felt like we needed some sort of boost to help us get through another month of outdoor running. Then it came to us: couldn't we find a way to just go once a week somewhere? Detto, fatto!(said and done!). We signed up for 25 entry passes to the M0dena Sp0rting Club. It's THE most expensive gym in town. It has plenty of machines and classes at every hour of the day and a huge weight room. But the best best part? It has a spa! Men's and women's is separate. It has two saunas, a turkish steam bath, four jacuzzi's, These Roman dipping baths (freezing water) and deck chairs where you can just chill out. Optional is massage and pedicures. We went last thursday for the first time and spent 20 minutes on an exercise bike, 20 on the step machine and 20 on the running treadmill. Then we hit the spa...
I can't wait to go back...for the spa...and you know what? The next night we went running on freshly fallen snow and had a wonderful run. We were just in need of a change attitude!

Weight lost so far: 2.5 kg
Calories: 1640
Exercise: 45' + 10 x 100mt uphill
Days left in the challenge: 11 (I can't believe I've lasted this long!)

1 comment:

anji said...

Hey Julia!
Sounds very lovely, wish we had decent gym/spas around here!!

Time for another trip to Italy I think!