Chip’s Not Dead Yet Social Media Training Group

We really need a better name than that, but this is my eighth blog post today, I think, so that is a task for another time (or perhaps the comments section?).

It’s like this: you start a job in front of the computer, and the gods of social media say, “Welcome! Get comfortable! Here’s your Flickr account, here’s your Facebook, here’s your Twitter, and here’s your thirty or forty pounds. Have a nice life.”

You see where I’m going with this? Today in fact, I realized with some horror that I was heavier than my mother’s “fat weight,” and my mother was four inches taller than me. So, when I was invited to attend the social media launch of the very inspiring Chips Not Dead Yet charity run, I got to thinking, as former Marathoners will do, about running again. What the hell, it’s only a mile (even if it’s straight up hill) and a mile probably won’t kill me (though I might wish that it would, particularly in the last few yards).

So I decided to form a social media training group, and I figured, as someone familiar with the power of publicity, that a group of highly addicted Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Bloggers would be a very attractive group for a smart gym, and what the heck, it’s only two months till race day so it’s not THAT big a commitment, so I looked around and asked around and was told that the smartest gym around was Steve Nash Sports Club, and so it was proven, as they almost immediately contacted me and said, basically, what can we do for you for free?

I love companies like that!

So it came to pass that every Wednesday at 6pm we meet in the gym lobby, get our day passes, and proceed to work out as long and as hard as we like, on some of the poshest (if occasionally confusing) exercise machines I’ve ever seen. But then, it IS the first time I’ve been in a gym in the 21st Century. That ladder-climbing thing where they have to tether you down and the crunches/shoot hoops thing frighten me, although staff assure me nobody’s been killed on them yet.

That stationary bike? It threw me. Damn thing ain’t properly broke to ride.
Anyway, we’ve now had two workouts of one hour and one and a half hours (here is our first workout report: we generally split up and do whatever we want; we have free run of the classes as well) and I have to say they’ve been terrific. I am really remembering what I enjoyed so much about working out, and there’s no satisfaction like the satisfaction of working out, soaking wet, looking down on people walking on the sidewalk, soaking wet. Because they’re cold and you’re not!

Next time I intend to try out the steam room afterwards, and NOT to forget my water bottle!

Remember:

Social Media addicts are welcome to drop in, 6pm Wednesdays at the Steve Nash Sports Club (next Wednesday, May 13 we will start at 5 pm instead) and let the desk staff know you’re part of the raincoaster social media workout group. Lee from the posh and expansive Richmond club, arranged the whole thing with Carla at the Downtown Club, and I’m working on doing a field trip out to Richmond to see their huge club with two different pools.

Will we see you there?