Patience is a virtue...

Whoever coined this phrase must have been part of renovating an old mill space for a gym.. The space I'm renting for the Dynamic Strength and Conditioning Gym is part of a renovated mill building at 100 Factory St in Nashua NH.. It's got a wide open 2000 sf workout area, 16 foot  ceilings and 14 gigantic windows letting in tons of natural light... It's a fantastic place for my gym.. Has lots of character. I really like it because it doesn't have that "doctor's office sterile" feeling of lots of personal training facilities, and it doesn't have the industrial feeling of the 25000 sf warehouse gyms loaded with shiny machines, mirrors, and flourescent lights... It's perfect for the types of workouts we're doing.. It's got the big beams overhead to hang my climbing ropes, gymnastic rings and pull-up bars from.. It's got the wide open floor space for the running, jumping, crawling exercises we do. There's plenty of room to swing kettlebells around, toss medicine balls, and jump rope.. I'm still trying to decide the best place to build my jungle gym :) It's perfect!

Back to the "patience is a virtue" phrase.... Being an old mill building, there is some work required to get the place in shape for the gym.. Particularly the windows.. The previous owners used to put plastic up over the windows in the Winter to keep the heat in and they would staple it to the trim around the windows.. then in the Spring, they'd tear the plastic down and leave the staples and repeat the process next winter.. Judging from the amount of staples in the trim, my best estimate is that this process began somewhere around the beginning of time. It took days to get all the staples out of the windows.. In retrospect, I should have turned all the staples in for scrap metal, I probably would have made a couple thousand dollars.. That done, I'm now on to scraping, filling holes, sanding, getting ready for new paint.. The whole time I'm in there thinking about other things I'd rather do, like poke pencils in my ears, or drive nails into my head. Trust me, this is not fun work.. But it gets done, albeit  very slowly, and I know the finished product will be impressive.. So I just keep at it. But it sure does test my patience. I think all the difficult workouts and bike races that I've done go a long way towards providing me the mental toughness to sit in a mill building on a beautiful sunny day pulling staples out of windows for 10 hours.. On the bright side I'm developing a grip that the "kung-fu grip" GI Joe of the 70's would be proud of!

Anyways, I can't wait to get it all done and start filling the place with people looking to get in the best shape of their lives. Hoping for a September opening.. If anybody is looking for a great functional conditioning workout you can come help me scrape and paint some windows :)