Adventures in Fitness this Thanksgiving

I have recently made that ascension to a level of social interaction among men that some people envy, some people disdain, and others just plain view with suspicion: I have a gym buddy.

His name's Paul. Like myself he's a gay man who likes to work out, and now we get in a gym trip every week, usually on Saturdays. It's almost like having a trainer again, although we're not so much instructing each other as we are sharing what we've learned from our trainers in past and giving each other's workouts a bit more variety and challenge. Today was a chest / back combo day and I tried out Paul's workout. Usually when I do my routine the weights are heavier and the reps are pretty routine; Paul's workout program has a bit more of a circuit training feel to it and consists of doing 10 reps of one exercise, 10 of another, 10 more of yet another and then back to where we started. 3 circuits and then take a break. Repeat. I hurt in all sorts of new places today, even though we were using lighter weights than I am used to; the movements were different and the muscles involved were the ones that usually contribute less during my regular sessions. All in all it was a good one, and since it's a holiday weekend we're back at it Monday morning.

Yes, while I may have let the blog slide a bit, I've still been to the gym and have been eating right. Used to be I was doing my cardio on the bikes at the gym, but now I run on the treadmill. The bike was getting so boring, even if I was listening to one of the new Doctor Who audio adventures on my MP3 player. The treadmill is more fun, especially when I've got a good set of tunes in my ears and I can pretend I'm running for my life.

The whole interaction aspect of the gym once made me feel a bit edgy; I had never seen such blatant cruising between gay dudes outside of the bars before, but now it's almost like the gym has become a bar. Just without booze. The music they play there can be just as tedious and loud. My friend Jay refers to the place as "Extreme Bath House", and he's not entirely wrong to do so now that I've spotted a bit of... ahem... "fun" going on in the locker rooms. The security agents of the Toronto Life Sqaure now patrol the men's change rooms regularly, supposedly to discourage theft, but I think the real reason is to discourage sex in the saunas and showers. I have never partaken myself; sex in a public place never really appealed to me. Some say it's the thrill of getting caught that it the turn on, but I know I'd get caught if I went that route, so I just observe the goings on and use them as inappropriate conversational fodder at work.

Now that the workout is behind me for today, I turn my thoughts to more domestic ideas. I have the week's menu to plan (I do this and post it on my fridge as my mehtod of balancing my diet), I'm going to make my own applesauce, I'm going to do some laundry later on. And I'll watch some Doctor Who.

That is all.