exercise

I hauled myself to the Y today after school, because it's been another rough week and I needed to get the stress hormones out of my muscles. I'm on the fence about the Y. It's expensive compared to just running (US$50 vs. zero), and actually not really convenient. It's about a mile away from my school, and I don't want to leave my school stuff at school, so I'd be left lugging all my stuff either on the walk, or on a micro or colectivo. So the couple times I've gone, I've gone home, changed into street clothes, gotten my Y clothes, and gotten back on the micro. So if I'm taking an extra trip up or down the hill, I might as well go down the hill, run some miles on the flats (there's a fantastic running path along the water all the way to Viña del Mar), and then come home.

I did the rowing machine for 21 minutes, which sort of felt like a warm-up. Then a little random weight-lifting, Then 25 minutes on some fancy computer-controlled auto-adjusting exercycle thing. I set it for "cardiovascular workout", and I'm in the middle of the hard part, sweating and all, and this nice guy comes over.

"You need more muscle mass."
Okay, I'll bite. "Why?"
"You're so skinny!"
"So?"
"Farmacia Ahumada has a GNC kind of thing..."
"Protein?"
"Yeah! To help you build more muscle. Have you always been skinny?"
"No, for several years I was fatter. My body has two modes: fat and skinny."
"Mine too!"

He was really nice. But such a weird cultural value. Why does muscle mass matter? It's more that the muscles I have aren't conditioned for bicycling. I don't want more muscle mass. I like being compact and flexible.

Maybe he missed me doing 20 minutes on the rowing machine as a warmup.