CAMPUS REC SUMMER EDITION

I finally got over my agitated feelings towards my school’s modified hours (12-5 on weekends) at the Campus Rec Center and stopped in yesterday for the first time, since arriving at school. Even though I have access to (and take advantage of) the Varsity Sports Weight Room, due to my membership on my College’s Varsity FIeld Hockey team – if you didn’t already know this then you have some catching up to do on my blog!! – I am very blessed to also have access to an amazing recreation facility.

I don’t mean to brag at all, however the Campus Rec at the College of William and Mary is awesome! It has three floors, an eight-lane swimming pool, rock-climbing wall, multiple courts for intramural sports and other activities (basketball, racquetball, volleyball, etc), an entire floor for weight-lifting dumbbells, racks with bars and plates, and boxes, kettlebells, jump ropes, and low-weight dumbbells, another floor dedicated to cardio machines, lifting assistance machines, massages, two group fitness classrooms and a smoothie bar. Jealous??

Although I complete all of heavy weight-lifting necessary for my training in the Varsity Weight Room, the Rec happily satisfies my other fitness needs with its abundance of cardio machines, swimming pool and large variety of group fitness classes and enthusiastic group fitness instructors. If you’ve been keeping up with my blog posts, you would’ve already learned that I have CECS, chronic exertional compartment syndrome, a fancy way to say NO FUN. The CECS makes the small muscles in my shin swell and causes running to be painful. In order to stay in shape, I’ve learned to love low-impact and no-impact activities that are still just as cardiovascularly challenging as running, such as rowing, biking, attending low-impact group fitness classes, and swimming.

Besides being a natural lover of all things fitness and exercise, the Rec is also (in my opinion) very aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Check out these pictures (borrowed from the Rec’s website) and you can agree for yourself:

Above you can see a section of the cardio machine floor, the swimming pool (used by the Men’s and Women’s Varsity Swim Teams), the lobby and the exterior of the Student Rec Center.

I was excited to find out that there was a new Lifetime-brand stationary bike; these newer models of step machines, treadmills and stationary bikes have a screen where it looks like you are outside running, walking, or biking and make the workout a lot more entertaining. I chose a course through rural towns in France and biked for a little over seventeen miles total, not including my warm-up or cool-down. I’m excited to return and bike the other trails and “explore” parts of the world where I’ve never been or seen before!

Below is a picture of the screen around ten miles in on my adventure through the French countryside, so you can see for yourselves how cool the graphics are; they are undeniably better to watch than the stats and numbers of an ordinary stationary bike.