Gym Review: Laguna Niguel 24 Hr. Fitness Agassi Super Sport

My running has been right on track this week--so far I've put in 16 miles and have run four nights in a row. Last night Sabina met me at the fancy new 24 Hr. Fitness Agassi Super Sport gym in Laguna Niguel. It's super expensive to have a membership there, but we wanted to check it out and they let us. This gym was super nice--granite counter tops in the bathrooms, beautiful outdoor pool and spa, large bathrooms, a stretching room, lots of equipment, TVs everywhere, etc. After scoping out the place, we found a treadmill and elliptical machine next to each other (which was nice also--Sabina could do her thing on the elliptical machine and I could run on the treadmill and we could still be side by side and chat through our workouts). Our machines had TVs on them, which really excited me at first, until I realized that there weren't very many channels and you have to have headphones to hear them and I didn't have any headphones with me. The treadmill I was running on was very soft to run on and it definitely felt like a step up from running on the old ghetto treadmills at the poor man's gyms I normally have to go to.

Sounds good so far (except for the expensive part), right? Well, as great as all of those things above are, this gym had one fatal flaw: It was HOT! The gym had a really high ceiling (it used to be an OSH hardware store), but no fans! Even though the other gyms I go to have fans caked in dust, some air does get through to you. This gym was just unbearably hot after working out in it for only five minutes. I ran much slower because of the heat--my first two miles were at a 9 minute/mile pace, then for 1/2 mile I slowed down to a 9:30 minute/mile pace, and then for the last 1/2 mile I slowed down to a 10 minute/mile pace (yikes!). I just cannot run when I'm super hot.

So, together Sabina and I agreed that this gym gets two thumbs down simply for being way too freakin' hot. Oh well, we couldn't afford the insane membership fees anyways!