Members of the month!

Hey- that's us! 

A couple weeks ago, Andrew and I got some good news and some less-good news. The less-good news was that our TRX instructor Kelly is leaving our gym to take an awesome new job (I'm not calling it bad news, because its great for her!). The good news is that (a) she's continuing to teach our TRX class for at least a few more months, and (b) as one of her final acts at the gym, she nominated Andrew and I to be members of the month!

We're thrilled about this for the obvious reason- it feels great to have our efforts recognized. But we're also thrilled because we love our gym as much as our gym loves us!

I bought my house in Eastport in 2003. That same year, Annapolis Athletic Club opened up its doors a mere 60-second walk from my own. For the next 6 years, I constantly heard great things about AAC and I thought about joining, but I was always turned away by the price. I'm not going to say how much it costs, but it is one of the more expensive gyms in the area. As a graduate student turned therapist-paying-off-grad-school, I could not imagine forking over what they were asking each month.

For those same 6 years, I also exercised... sometimes. When I was at Yale, I would manage to use the (amazing) Yale gym about twice a week. It was about two miles from my house- a 10-minute drive or 30-minute walk- and that was far enough to make excuses not to go. I signed up for fitness classes and always dropped out. I did exercise DVDs or ran from home, but often made excuses to skip those activities too. I doubted my ability to stick to any kind of exercise consistently.

Then, in the 2009-2010 academic year, I signed up for a very intense schedule of full-time work, classes, and a 20-hour/week internship doing grief counseling. As a bonus, those 20 hours included one 8-hour shift guiding people through the decedent identification process at the DC morgue (you can read about that here). I spent the summer leading  up to that trying to mentally prepare myself for the intense schedule and emotional work. Then, in late July, less than one month out from the start of my crazy year, I got dumped. Suddenly and painfully.

In the first two weeks after the breakup, I thought "What am I going to do now? How am I going to survive this and help people when I'm a total mess?" And that's when I re-considered AAC. I knew I needed to do something to focus on myself and relieve my stress. I also found a new way to think about the cost: I added up what I used to spend on my relationship. I thought about gas to visit him, meals I paid for, and presents I bought him. I realized I probably spent twice as much on my relationship as I would on the gym. So, it was decided: the gym would be my new boyfriend.

I joined AAC in August 2009 and I knew I wanted to do group classes. I soon realized that the only classes which fit my schedule were at 6am. As someone who once struggled to get up for 10am classes, this worried me, but I decided to give it a go. Soon, I was hooked. I realized what had been missing from all of my previous exercise attempts: other people! I am a people person, and I am more motivated by relationships than anything else. The people in the 6am classes were nice, and fun, and they noticed me pretty quickly. Once I felt like I knew them, those relationships motivated me to keep showing up. Now, 3 years later, I consider many of those people true friends.

Naturally, when Andrew moved to Annapolis, I wanted him to be part of my gym community too. I didn't want to pressure him, so I just invited him to take a few classes as a guest and see what he thought. I never imagined that he would become so committed so quickly! The progress he has made is amazing and I couldn't be more proud.

Read our full story here, on the gym website!