In the latest of my occasional series on "things I couldn't do during the pandemic", I'm ready to wax poetic about going back to the gym. This isn't actually that new for me, since I started going back in August, but it's now pretty much re-established in my life/routine. I'm broadly quite happy with it, though with a few caveats.
I wrote about it in my post from July 2020, in which I talked about a bunch of things that I missed doing. There are a couple still on the list, but those tend to involve flights to Britain, which I'm kinda ready to do but haven't accomplished yet. Of the ones that I had access to here in the Bay Area, going to the gym was pretty much the last hurdle.
This is for obvious reasons: it's a big, enclosed space with a large number of people gathering together and exhaling at one another. The gym was a disease incubator even before the damn pandemic, so it's not surprising that 24 Hour Fitness shut down completely for most of 2020, even to the point of not charging for the monthly membership. They did almost go out of business, and my local gym not only laid off my trainer, but also consolidated with the site nearby (which it had been planning to do already), so it's clear that this decision cost them something.
When they reopened in 2021, I wasn't quite ready to go back in person, even notwithstanding the fact that I was living with someone who wasn't vaccinated against Covid. I had some training sessions left over from before the start of the pandemic, so I burned those off by doing virtual sessions on FaceTime, and when I ran out of those, I suspended my membership.
The trouble with not going to the gym, however, is that there are parts of the year when it'd be really nice to be able to work out indoors. Cold isn't too much of an issue here in the Bay Area, but when we get a rainy winter, it's nice to run without worrying about slipping in puddles or soggy leaves.
The increasingly long and hot summers are more of an issue, especially if we were to have another year like 2020 when the late summer heatwave was paired with dangerously high levels of air pollution caused by wildfires in Northern California. The air quality in the years since then hasn't been as bad, at least not here, but that still left large stretches where the temperature and the humidity were high enough to make running outside a slog.
So last summer I ventured back in. As I said, my club moved to a smaller location, but one that was essentially next door, so my trip to the new gym is pretty much the same. During the summer I was even still parking in the same parking structure. I'll go back to that when it's light enough in the evenings to not get run over by idiots as I walk to and from the gym, but for the winter I'm parking a little closer.
I've focused mainly on the treadmill, and on keeping up my running mileage. I've always had more tolerance for running on treadmills, in part because I amuse myself by keeping an eye on things like speed, incline, distance and calories burned, but I've also started wearing my Beats Fit Pro earbuds when I run, so that I can listen to music or keep up with my never-ending backlog of podcasts.
As an aside, I've discovered that Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is remarkably well-suited to running on a treadmill for 30-40 minutes. Go figure.
The other reason I focus on the section with the cardio machines is that I can pretty much always find a treadmill to run on, or failing that, an elliptical or even an exercise bike. The weight section is always too crowded, though, and so, while I try to do a machine chest press or lat pulldown, it's kind of rare that those machines are available. Which doesn't matter because I've picked up some adjustable weights and resistance bands, and can always rely on the good old bodyweight exercises to do my strength training.
I did, however, also sign up for a few sessions with a trainer. Mainly I wanted to pick up some functional mobility tips and have some accountability for my diet and exercise, but I don't know if I'll continue with it long-term. Still, it was a fixture of my pre-pandemic gym-going, so it's nice to be back to that as well.
As far as Covid precautions, I'll admit I'm relatively lax. I see a few people wearing masks on the treadmills, but I'm not one of them. As I said, it's a place where there's a lot of people breathing out, but the cardio section feels unpopulated enough that I don't feel as much anxiety about it. It also helps that I haven't encountered anybody that was hacking up a storm, the way I used to back before 2020, so that's set my mind at ease.
Plus, I'm up to date on my Covid boosters (for what that's worth, since they don't really stop you catching it, they just stop you dying from it), and I practice good masking etiquette and hygiene everywhere else. The fact that the weight section is always crowded is another blessing in disguise, Covid-wise, because that's probably the dirtier part of the gym. I always make sure to wipe down the machines I use and wash my hands after I've finished my session, which is hygiene theater to a point, but is probably helping to reduce the amount of crap I wipe into my eyes and nose and mouth.
Still, I have no illusions that it's a relatively risky thing to do, especially when cases surge in the winter. I'll look forward to going back to running outside again in a few weeks, although I'll probably have to keep going to the gym when it's too hot to run outside. I'll also revisit the concept if I do catch Covid from there, but again, I'm also heartened by the fact that the strains are less dangerous than they used to be.
Overall, this is probably the sign that, for me at least, the pandemic is over. I accept we haven't been in a state of emergency for a while, and I've modified my behavior accordingly since 2021. I've grown more comfortable with more and more things I used to do, and I'm also lucky to live in a place where the majority of people take it seriously, so vaccinations are common and so are masks. I'm still wearing masks at the grocery store and the doctor's office, and I'm keeping up with my boosters, so some behavior from 2020 persists.
Overall, though, 2020 and its attendant horrors grow ever more remote, and I'm happy about that. I never had much time for the "just gotta live my LIIIIIFFFEEE" crowd, especially when the Delta variant was raging, but it is good to be able to do stuff outside the house again.
And if there is another big pandemic, at least I won't have to worry about one thing: I'm keeping a pretty damn good stock of toilet paper in my special Covid-hoard.
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