Another New Gym

So I went to crossfit frederick this morning to try out their gym before I decide what to do. I met coach/owner Dave as I went in and he had me fill out the standard if you die it isn't our fault stuff. He asked me if I ever workout and then told me the days workout was a 6 mile run (jaw drops). I told him I had not run that kind of distance since probably last fall but I would give it a go. He offered to let me come back tomorrow for the trial workout instead but I had already woken up at 5:10 am so screw that, I was gonna work out somehow. The warm up was not much to speak of, just a bit of running in place and some shoulder stretches. I did some extra leg stretches and then coach Dave, another new member, and I took off so he could show us the 1 mile loop the first time around since neither of us knew it. I ran with this other new guy the whole way and spoke to him a bit about the gym. He just started there about 2.5 weeks ago and is going 5 days a week. He says he likes it and all the people. He mentioned he had recently tried P90X but didn't get more than a couple weeks into it before stopping, no explanation on why. He seemed like a nice guy and it was probably good to have someone to run with because I probably ran a bit faster than I otherwise would have. I ended up finishing their "1 mile loop" 6 times in 49:24 which works out to about an 8:14 pace for 6 miles which is way fast for me. I went to mapmyrun and put the route in and get a loop of 0.95 miles which would work out to a total of 5.7 miles for an actual pace of about 8:40 over the workout. This is still a pretty damn impressive pace for me over that distance. There really is something to this working out in a group thing I guess.

I had been looking at the last few weeks of programming for this gym online and noticed a lot of the workouts were the well known named crossfit workouts so I asked coach Dave if this was typical. He went into an explanation of the hero workouts being named after fallen special operators and EMS types and then on to explain the "girls" are used to mark progress in crossfit over time. I told him I knew what they were but was wondering if their programming always had that large a proportion of the named workouts. It just struck me as odd that 12 out of the last 23 workouts were named workouts although I have no other experience to compare that to so perhaps that is normal. He never really gave me an answer on that one. I don't really have a problem with them doing the named workouts regularly but my thinking is I could do that at home and just go online and pick one of them on my own, no need to have them tell me.

This gym was a bit smaller than the other one I have been going to but it sounds like they have more members. Coach Dave also mentioned they are moving to a larger space in a month but it is just right across the parking lot. He said normally there would be maybe 15 people in this class but that when they do runs not nearly as many show up. There were 4 of us there, one was another one of the coaches, and only 2 of us did the run while the other 2 substituted rowing something like 9660 meters. The only real difference I noticed between this and the other place as far as coaching was that there was no prescribed cool down on the board but coach Dave instructed us what stretches to do before we left and he watched us do them. I did talk for a bit to the other coach that was in my class and she said she was a former gymnast who had never done crossfit before coming to this gym. she loves it and they are very good about customizing the workouts if you have injuries or other limitations. I don't really think I need this so much though so I don't know if that is a huge selling point for me.

The drive home was a bit worse than from the other gym, there was a good bit of traffic on 70 by the time I got done and left. It still is not too bad though and I could make this trip no problem if I want to. also since they have a 5:00 am class I could always do that one. The guy I ran with usually does the 5:00 am and he said there are usually only have 4-5 people in that one.

I currently am planning on joining the other gym I was attending but I sort of feel I did not give this gym much of a chance given I only went to one class. The thing is though that is all they will let me do for free without signing up and the other one let me do a week so I guess that is their fault. I just don't really see how this gym is worth something like an extra $30 or more a month even though they have more options for the class times. Maybe I will do a few months at the other one and if the times become an issue I can always switch.