Gym Membership/Cable Combo?

For Mother's Day Britt gave me a gym membership to Planet Fitness. I suppose for some women it would insulting that their husbands give them a gift of the gym ("Here Honey, I thought you needed this!"), but I LOVED it! It gives me an opportunity to get out of the house, and I get to work out which just doesn't happen regularly if I'm depending on going jogging outside. It gets hot, or it rains, or it's dark, or whatever. Planet Fitness is open 24 hours a day, and I just can't wait for the time I go at 300AM. AND now there's the added incentive of investment - Britt paid for me to go for the next 18 months so I better get my tail there.

I really love this gym because it's not filled with those really ridiculously in shape people, or pushy employees. I can just go, get on the treadmill, run, and then go home. It's easy. And it's never really that crowded, which is also nice. I haven't really explored the weight section yet but so far I haven't seen any of the type of guys that creeped me out at NC State's gyms. You know the ones - they're super muscular and they laugh at all the girls who come in there, even if they know how to use all the machines correctly (which I never did).

But today as I was jogging along, I saw a new perk to my gym membership: cable TV. This fact was pointed out to me by the guy who was on the treadmill next to me, not using it, but just standing there and watching ESPN2. He stood there for about 20 minutes watching the TV and then went off to the weight section. I never really thought about it before, but you could totally just come to the gym and watch TV. Each of the aerobic machines (treadmill, stair climber, bikes, etc) face the TVs and there are two rows of ten. There are ten different channels you can choose from, and each machine has a little box you can plug your headphones into and you can listen to whichever channel you want to. There's ESPN, ESPN2, MSNBC, FOX, VH1, MTV, and some others on the far side that I haven't figured out yet.

Just think, for $10-$20 a month, you can get a gym membership, and cable! Now that's a deal. You could go to the gym when your show is coming on, hop on a treadmill, and just lazily walk through your program. Then when it's done, you go home feeling like you weren't a couch potato. I think they should use this idea in their marketing. I'm sure it would work for some people. Me, I'm content to finally start using my iPod after owning it for a year.