Caren's Big Thoughts

That Was a Goal, Not a Resolution

In the interest of preserving my status as an anti-resolutionary, I must point out that I merely had a goal of joining the dingy gym this year. Not a resolution. Just so we're straight about that.

In any case, I went on Jan. 2 to check out the gym. Turned out it was not dingy at all. That was merely my writer's imagination getting away from me yet again. The gym is Anytime Fitness and it's wonderful. They only have equipment I would actually use, no classes, and a dearth of beautiful young things. That last point is especially attractive to those of us hanging on to remnants of our once-youthful selves. They also have tanning beds, but I will never use those because I think they are an invitation to skin cancer. Because it was January, they happened to be running the no-enrollment-fee discount. Of course, I joined right away.

Since then, I have been to said gym 4 times and on another day walked 4 miles with my dear friend and new Mills & Boon author Deb Marlow. I get up before 5 am and head right out. There are surprisingly few people at the gym at 5 am. There aren't that many when I leave at 6 am, either. The most deserted time so far has been Sunday morning, 7 am. There was no one when I arrived and no one when I left. I cranked the iPod and sang like a drunk monkey. I'm relatively certain the security cameras are video only, no audio. If they have audio, they may get rid of it after that. Whew! I'm getting addicted to working out, just like I did the only other time I went to the gym on a regular basis. But that was in the 80s, I was in college, and I used my sister's membership to go to low-impact aerobics classes. Man.

Anyway, back to my no tanning rant. When I popped over to the Skin Cancer Foundation website, they had a suggestion for a New Year's resolution: no tanning. They said: "The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a branch of the World Health Organization (WHO), has unequivocally linked sunbed tanning among young people to melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer." Need any more evidence? I hope neither you nor any of your friends have to suffer or die because of tanning. Be pale, all the cool kids are!

I work with some people who sport the year-round tan and look like shoe leather. Some smoke, too, I guess to make sure the cancer card doesn't miss them. Anyone else know someone just begging for cancer?

Labels: gym, Life, resolutions, skin cancer

posted by Caren Crane @ 8:04 PM