Tonight after work, I went over to Equinox to finally take advantage of the free session you get with a trainer when you join. I’d been working out with Joel when I joined, so I wanted to wait until I wasn’t working out with him any more and could really take advantage of it. I did the fitness assessment last week, overslept for our session Thursday 🙁 , and finally worked out with the trainer tonight.

Honestly? I was disappointed. I had told him I had lost 50 pounds and had worked out with a trainer before, but most of the workout was pretty easy. We didn’t talk much about the fitness assessment either, other than him telling me that I am really tight, that my lower back pain is muscular (due to tight hamstrings, piriformis and IT bands) and that I could lose a little more fat and tone up. I get that he was trying to get to know me and my body and what I was capable of, but I didn’t get such an amazing workout that I was dying to work out with him again–plus, I am finally in the spot where my goals are “it would be nice to ___.”

I had very specific goals when I was working with Joel, and I didn’t have the knowledge on my own, so paying for him to teach me out to work out and keep me motivated was worth it. Also, while I do love Equinox, I was shocked when the trainer talked to me about pricing. New York Sports Club (where I used to go), does packages in increments of five. Equinox does packages in increments of 12. So I could either buy a pack of 12 (which costs, as you might imagine, a pretty penny), or I could just buy a bunch of single sessions. I might even have bought a few single sessions, had the trainer not first tried to sell me hard on the 12 sessions and tell me that I would get “so much more” doing that.

The two reasons it might be nice to work out with a trainer are to work out to correct the imbalances that lead to my lower back pain and to tone up my abs–but neither of them are worth spending that much money on right now. These are things I will be working on on my own after my races, but I want to learn how to do so myself and not always have to rely on a trainer.

As I walked out, I got a text that Kendyl was back in town and wanted to meet up for dinner. Obviously, I was in.

We went to Rachel’s, and I got chicken with apples, walnuts and double vegetables instead of vegetables and mashed potatoes. I’m really trying to be mindful again of what I eat, and this dinner was great, and I had about half and was full. I was excited to take home leftovers, until I got home and realized that I hadn’t actually, you know, taken them home. As if they didn’t already hate us enough for being the last table…