This weekend has been kind of rainy, compounded by fog that makes the entire town seem like an English town, transported smack in Iowa. I had been considering driving to Rochester or Waterloo, but instead I did the adult thing, stayed home and did taxes. It’s not exactly glamorous, or even interesting unless you are the person directly related to the taxes, in which case it’s the equivalent of a nail-biting thriller, a Shakespearean tragedy and a come-from-behind sports movie all in one.
Once my taxes were finished I decided to laze around and surf the web for a few hours, then thought better of it and went to the gym instead. It always takes some dragging to get to the gym, but because that gym is the Cresco Fitness Center I can’t say I mind too much. It’s similar to the La Rana Bistro in that you just wouldn’t expect something this nice to be in a town this small. I’ve used the fitness center of the Mayo Clinic courtesy of my brother, which is extremely nice. By “extremely nice” I mean it is a multi-level facility that occupies an entire block, with individual television for the elliptical machines and treadmills, an indoor mezzanine that is an irregularly shaped walking/running track, wide-screen TVs blasting the news at a reasonable pace, along with locker rooms that would not look out of place at an upscale country club, a swimming pool, and God only knows what else because I have not had the time to explore it all.
Then there’s the Cresco Fitness Center, which does not benefit from either the size of the town, the money of said town’s residents or the will of a multi-millionaire to make sure there is a state-of-the-art fitness center. Given those handicaps, it stacks up extremely well against the Mayo Clinic Fitness Center.
One of the first things you’ll notice is the Cresco Fitness Center has a pool, a half-Olympic sized swimming pool. One side has a shallowly-sloping ramp that extends to a depth of four feet at the last third. That last third leads to the other side, which leads to a depth of eight feet. A concrete divider separates the two, so the pool has a U-shape when viewed from above. It’s pretty clever. A hot tub is also in the pool room, which is a nice way to relax after swimming a few laps.
Then there’s the weight room. It occupies half of a gymnasium, the other half hosts a basketball court, which is entirely netted in so treadmill runners don’t have to encounter basketballs suddenly impeding their progress, a la Mario in Donkey Kong. Surrounding the weight-lifting area and the basketball court is an indoor track. It’s a nice added touch, and the only thing I can’t understand about it is why they have people run one way on even days and another way on odd days. I can understand the concept, but I think I would start to feel a little dizzy if I ran one way and then the other. Not to mention the associations it would make in your mind. Would you try to go counterclockwise around the office if it was an even-numbered day? Do leap years blow people’s minds?
Regardless, it’s a nice place to spend time, and there are a few other rooms as well, most of which I don’t get the opportunity to use. The upper level has a basketball court that can double as a volleyball court, and it leads to two rooms—the aerobics room, which has several aerobic DVDs and exercise equipment, and the martial arts room/wrestling room. Both of these rooms are accessed by small little doors with a tiny little square window in each one. You could be forgiven for thinking you were about to enter a repurposed broom closet, instead of entering into a spacious room that could hold several people without feeling crowded. For those of you that are science fiction fans, it is akin to walking into the TARDIS on the show Doctor Who.
The lower level has the more interesting features, in my opinion. This is where the sports practice areas are—batting cages, golf swing room and an archery target. The fact that a fitness center in a small town offers so much is insane, and makes you wonder exactly how it exists.
There are reasons, of course. I think the Cresco Fitness Center is so successful is that it has a ton of community usage. On any given day when you go in you will see children and senior citizens alike checking in. The parking lot is always full. Sure, you can get the occasional weekend where you get to park in a choice space, but most of the time you’ll be walking quite a way. It hosts several basketball tournaments, along with aerobics and yoga classes, not to mention water aerobics Tuesday and Thursday evenings. I’ve known churches whose members attend less regularly than the members of the Cresco Fitness Center. This can be explained partially because in Cresco, there just isn’t that much to do. The farms have already braced themselves for the winter and it’s something for people to do once they get out of work. It’s also something for kids to do once they get out of school. Not to mention that Cresco has an active wrestling team, which means you will see tons of high school kids looking to hone their bodies to the nth degree, along with Cresco high school graduates who have gotten into the habit of honing their bodies to the nth degree and are unwilling to give up the practice. Which brings up an interesting fact about Cresco—it may be the only town in the United States that does not suffer from a youth obesity problem. Between the farms, the fitness center and high school sports, I can count the number of obese children I’ve seen on the fingers of an inept Yakuza member. Want some more proof the Cresco Fitness Center is firmly established in the community? They recently had a fundraiser to update some of the more ancient machinery and give the place an overall facelift. They needed $20,000 dollars to do so—and they got it. In a recession. Where most people are worried about losing their jobs and pinching pennies. So I feel pretty confident when I say people in Cresco consider the Cresco Fitness Center a vital part of their community.
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