Rochestarians are a long-suffering lot. We endure endless winters, followed by pothole season, followed by approximately 4 weeks of “summer” weather whose temperatures run the gamut from stifling to barely-above-freezing.

And this spring? Wettest on record since the 1920s. The rare appearance of the sun over the last few days has made me weep tears of joy.MORE

I’m new to the smartphone craze. In fact, before my iPhone came to live with me, an ancient trackphone was the way I communicated when I was on-the-go.

Yes, I understand how truly pathetic this sounds.

And yes, I am now madly in love with my iPhone.

Seriously, how did I ever live without it?

It seems I am in good company.MORE

April has featured less-than-ideal weather conditions. It’s been cold. It’s been rainy. And windy. It’s even snowed a few times.

In other words, it’s been a typical Rochester April.

And yet “summer” at the club began over three weeks ago, when the pool opened in high style with the Blue Whale/Blue Lips Pool Party. If you haven’t yet seen the photos from the event, you must check them out on our Facebook page.MORE

Our fair club is full of quick studies, so plenty of you were buzzing this week about whether the Blue Whale/Blue Lips pool party planned for next Friday, April 1st, April Fool’s Day, was, well, a joke.

You called the front desk. You posted questions on our Facebook wall. You asked associates and fellow members.

The final word from Glenn?

The Party is On!

It might be snowing (although I certainly hope not).

We may have to borrow attire from the Aquatics Team to stay dry.

But there will be an awesome party on the pool deck, in the Adirondack Lodge where the fire will be roaring, and of course, in the 80-degree pool itself next Friday, from 6-7:30pm. 

Need a little incentive to jump in, other than to claim bragging rights with your friends that you went swimming, outdoors, in Rochester, on April 1st?

I’ve got the just-released raffle prize list. Jump in during one (or all!) of these scheduled times, and you can win a great prize

Morning (6:30am-9:30am)

Everyone who gets in will receive a black Midtown t-shirt and Midtown sunglasses

The following will be raffled off:

• $50 gift card to Henry B’s
• $20 gift card to Black & Blue
• $20 gift card to out.fit

Afternoon (11:00am-1:00pm)

Everyone who gets in will receive a black Midtown t-shirt and Midtown sunglasses

The following will be raffled off:

• $50 gift card to Henry B’s
• $20 gift card to Black & Blue
• $20 gift card to out.fit

Evening Party (6pm-7:30pm)

Everyone who gets in will receive a black Midtown t-shirt and Midtown sunglasses

The following will be raffled off:

• One free month of individual dues
• $50 gift card to Henry B’s
• $20 gift card to Black & Blue
• (2) $20 gift card to out.fit

Also at the evening party, someone who jumps in the pool will win the Grand Prize:

A Two-Night Stay at the Del Monte Lodge.

Non-member guests are more than welcome at the party. In fact, if you bring a guest, you’ll receive an extra entry into the Grand Prize drawing.

And if you post a message on our Facebook wall telling us you’re attending the Blue Whale/Blue Lips Splash Party, you’ll receive another entry!

Kids are welcome, but it will be more of a party atmosphere. The club will provide pizza, light appetizers, water, beer, wine, and the signature drink, a Blue Whale.

You must RSVP soon, so do so on our Facebook Events page or at the front desk.

Are you jumping in next Friday?

If history is a good indicator, April 1st in Rochester will be chilly.

The average high temperature for an April day in our fair city is around 55 degrees. The average low is 35 degrees.

But the water in the Midtown pool will be a warm and inviting 80 degrees, and the energy on the pool deck will be even hotter because there’s an awesome party planned for opening day.

First, a little perspective. I know of no other outdoor pool in the area that’s ever opened for the season this early in the year.

This makes the fact that our pool is opening pretty incredible.

Aquatics Director Tim Auerhahn is working tirelessly to get the pool ready for the big day. In fact, he’s chronicling his efforts every few days on our Facebook page.

On April 1st, there might be snow on the ground and icicles hanging from the roof of the Adirondack Lodge.

But the pool will be open for swimming regardless, and of course, there’s going to be a  party to celebrate.

Free for members and guests, the big party to kick off the swimming season will feature a signature drink – the Blue Whale, of course – beer, wine, and light appetizers.

Everyone that’s brave enough to get in the water is entered into a drawing to win the Grand Prize:  a two-night stay at the Del Monte Lodge.   

Other great prizes will be raffled off as well.

Non-member guests are more than welcome at the party. In fact, if you bring a guest, you’ll receive an extra entry into the Grand Prize drawing.

And if you post a message on our Facebook wall telling us you’re attending the Blue Whale/Blue Lips Splash Party, you’ll receive another entry!

On April 1st, it may not look like this

But the warmer weather is coming soon, and I can’t wait to spend the summer by the pool.

Are you coming to the party?

Yesterday, one of the club’s loyal lap swimmers posted to our Facebook page with a question about the pool opening.

I went right to the man in charge, Aquatics Director, Tim Auerhahn, to get the inside scoop on what we can expect.

Here’s what he had to say about what he and his staff are working on as they ready the beauty in the back of the club for swimmers.

Right now we’re patiently waiting for a little more ice to melt off of the cover so we can really begin to fill, heat, treat, and chemically balance the water (a process that can take two weeks). As of right now, we’re still anticipating opening on schedule.

Our hours of operation will be as follows: 

Effective April 1st

Morning Lap Swim, Monday-Friday, 6:30am-9:30am

Afternoon Lap Swim, Monday-Friday, 11:00am-1:00pm

Evening Lap Swim, Monday-Thursday, 5:00pm-7:00pm

Weekend Open Swim, Saturday and Sunday, 10:00am-2:00pm

Thanks, Tim!

Tim had a great idea to write daily updates on the opening of the pool to give members an insider’s perspective on what it takes to get a pool the size of the one at the club ready for the season. If you’ve “Liked” our Facebook page, you will receive these updates as Notes in your News Feed. If you haven’t “Liked” the club’s page yet, now is the perfect time.

For a look back on the day the pool covers came off in 2010, check out this post.

Will you be jumping in the pool on April 1st?

Remember this?

Yeah. Me either.

Winters in Rochester can seem endless. The good news, though, is that beauty up there is opening up again in four short months.

And the club is hard at work using the off-season to make next year’s pool season the best one yet.

When the pool closed at the end of October, Tim Auerhahn, Aquatics Director, hosted a “Lap Swimmers’ Breakfast” to solicit feedback from the 2010 pool season. Tim said he received some great ideas, which he plans on discussing with others at the club over the next four months.

 Here are a few of his favorite member suggestions to improve swimming at the club:

• Get a covered area by the hot tub for towels in the winter.
• Add electrical outlets around the pool deck for sun bathers with electronic devices.
• Have the lifeguards do more “foot patrols.”
• Install air conditioning in the poolside bathrooms and clean them more regularly.
• Play more fun pool music, and less country!
• Have Dive-In Movies for adults.
• Run free clinics for flip turns and stroke techniques

Do you have any suggestions for improving the pool or outdoor facilities? Share them here, or email them to tim.auerhahn@midtown.com.

Read any article about weight-loss tips or healthy living and you will undoubtedly find a line in it that knocks the so-called “fancy gym.”

It might say something like:

“You don’t need a fancy gym membership to get in shape.”

Or

“Fancy gym memberships won’t take off the pounds.”

Or

“Who needs to go to a fancy gym when staying active is as simple as lacing up your sneakers and hitting the road. ”

These statements are true, to a certain degree. No one needs the new iPhone, the NFL Sunday Ticket, the state-of-the-art laptop, or the leather sectional when the wool one was just fine. These upgrades might make your life more fun or more comfortable, but these are wants, not needs (although my husband might beg to differ about the NFL Sunday Ticket).

But where emotional and physical well-being are concerned, I have absolutely no problem with admitting that I am deeply in love with my “fancy gym.”

Here’s why.

I have belonged to and visited other gyms. And while the experiences haven’t been terrible, these other establishments do not hold a candle to the environment, support, and facilities of Midtown. It’s the atmosphere of Midtown that has made it so much easier to attain my fitness goals.

At Midtown, if I have a question about how to work a machine, I can find a fitness attendant or personal trainer within seconds who is willing to drop everything to help me. They are highly visible. They are incredibly knowledgeable. And they have never, ever made me feel like my question was unimportant or silly, even when my question was, “Um, how do you start this Arc Trainer?” and the answer was, “See this large, green QuickStart button? Press it.”

At Midtown, I can work out, have lunch, take a tennis lesson, attend a yoga class, and get a massage, all without ever leaving the grounds. And on my way out, I can skip the Starbucks run by grabbing an iced coffee in the cafe. Considering my schedule is anything but flexible, having everything under one roof is very convenient.

At Midtown, my children are able to enjoy 4,000 square feet of Pure Kiddie Heaven in Kidtown, where they are enthusiastically greeted by name every time we arrive by the friendly, energetic, warm, and helpful associates who work there. My 21-month-old twins love the people who work in Kidtown so much that they yell the name of their favorite staff member the minute I push them through the door in the stroller. Where once they clung to me and cried, they now practically trip over their own feet to rush into the play area, leaving me in their Cheerio-laden dust. They love being there because the staff members take the time to make each experience a joy for them. And this makes my workouts all the more productive because I do not have to worry about them for one second.

At Midtown, the staff I’ve met ask me about my training. They’ve offered me tips to improve. They are genuinely interested in me and my progress. And the staff members I do not know personally are always supremely friendly and accommodating. Encouragement means everything when you’re training for a solo-sport event, like a marathon or half-marathon.

At Midtown, the facilities are always clean. There are towels on the racks at all times, the rugs and floors are grime-free,  and the locker rooms and bathrooms are spotless, even during high-volume times. The club does not have the funky gym smell I immediately noticed in other clubs. Working out in a clean club makes a difference. It helps me enjoy my time there, and it encourages me to stay longer.

At Midtown, I have never had to wait for a treadmill. I’ve only ever had one instance where a machine wasn’t working. The treadmills and ellipticals are replaced every year, even if they’re in perfect working order, to ensure the best experience for the members using them.

At Midtown, the pool is an oasis, especially in the hot summer we’re experiencing in Rochester. I don’t belong to a country club, but I’d imagine the atmosphere is similar to the one in the outdoor pool area, minus the pretension.

I’m always with at least one of my young children, but that doesn’t stop me from looking longingly at the people reading on lounge chairs, or enjoying a glass of wine with friends under the umbrellas, and thinking, “Someday, that will be me. It may be 18 years from now, but one day, that will be me!”

At Midtown, the opportunities to make new friends and business contacts abound. From tennis socials to Sunshine Yoga on the Great Lawn to PowerNet meetings, for me, belonging to Midtown has been about gaining a new community of like-minded individuals. And it’s a community to which I feel lucky to belong.

And this is why you’ll never find me knocking my “fancy gym.”

How does your membership make a difference to your fitness goals?

I grew up in the water.

As a young child, I spent a lot of time in my grandmother’s huge, in-ground pool. I was leaping off the diving board with an old-school, plastic swimming bubble strapped to my back around the age of five, and swimming bubble-free in the deep end around the age of six or seven. Uncoordinated and nonathletic on land, I was fearless and confident in the pool.

And this summer, I wanted to encourage my almost-four-year-old daughter to love swimming as much as I had. I had heard from many fellow club members that the preschooler swimming lessons were fantastic because they gave kids two solid, uninterrupted weeks of pool time with top-notch instructors. Unlike other swimming programs in the community that offer lessons once a week, the lessons at Midtown take place on four consecutive days each week, with the fifth day (Friday) set aside for makeup lessons or for further instruction if your child needs it. Each person that I talked to told me that her child had learned an incredible amount and had made significant improvements in swimming ability through the lessons.

The rave reviews sold me, and as soon as the Summer issue of Spirit came out, I paged through until I found the schedule, and signed up my daughter, who had been in pools often but who had never experienced any formal instruction.

On the first day, we met her instructor who was warm, welcoming, and very brave to take on the task of teaching preschoolers how to swim. Three-and-four-year-olds sometimes have the attention spans of gnats, and getting them to follow you is a bit like herding cats. I had no idea how my daughter would react to her instructor, to being in the water, or to being told what to do by someone she just met.

But now, a week after her lessons have ended, I can say unequivocally that the lessons were fantastic and a huge success.

Here’s what I loved:

The water temperature was always perfect. The instructors did not have to waste anytime coaxing the kids into the water because it was too cold. The kids got right in and were eager to get started. In addition, the depth of the Intermediate pool is exactly right for lessons. 2 feet, 6 inches is the perfect depth for a preschooler to move around comfortably, and without fear of the water level being too high for their bodies.

Fundamentals were first. One of the first things the kids worked on was their kicks. They would grasp the edge of the pool and when the instructor said “Splash me!”, they would kick like crazy. At the beginning of the lessons, my daughter would only kick with one leg, leaving the other firmly planted at the bottom of the pool for balance and security. By the end of the first week of lessons, she was a two-leg-kicking fool.

The lessons were fun and the kids were excited about participating.The noodles (used for floating while practicing kicks and arm movements) were a big hit, as were the boards. They did “Ring-Around-The-Rosey,” “London Bridges,” and jumping games.

There was no pressure to participate. If a child was unsure about a particular activity (for my daughter, it was jumping in by herself), then he or she didn’t need to do it. The instructors encouraged them, but did not force them or pressure them in any way.

The multiple-instructor format.I don’t think my daughter’s class was meant to have several different instructors during the course of the two weeks, but while some parents saw this as a negative, I saw it as a positive. Each instructor had her own style. While some were nurturing and sweet, others were more firm and direct in their instruction, and my daughter benefited from both of these styles.

One-on-one instruction.There were different points throughout the lessons where the instructor would give individualized attention to each child. With the other kids practicing their kicks or hanging on to the side, the instructor would take each child out into deeper water and help her float on her belly or her back, practice “scooping” the water with her hands, and near the end of the lessons, combine skills (bubbles, kicking, scooping) to “swim” on her own.

Here’s what my daughter can do now that she couldn’t do before:

• Blow bubbles in the water while floating on her belly.
• Kick with both legs simultaneously.
• Go underwater completely, while blowing bubbles out of her nose.
• Use her arms in the water for something other than splashing me in the face.

My daughter won’t be tackling an Iron Man anytime soon. She will not jump into the pool on her own without holding onto my arms, although several kids in her class did this enthusiastically. She’s not quite a natural in the water and would still prefer to play than practice what she learned in her lessons.

But she’s three. And next year, when the summer rolls around, I’m signing her up for another round of lessons. I couldn’t be more happy with her first lesson experience at the club.

Think you know everything there is to know about Midtown? Whether you’ve belonged to the club for years, or you’re enjoying your first month as a member, I think at least one thing on this list will surprise you.

I asked Midtown managers and staff about the services, amenities, classes, and general features of the club that they feel are under-utilized simply because members might not know about them.

Here’s what they had to say.

Category: Pool

Secret: You CAN Find a Quiet Reading Spot

If you’re like many Midtowners, you choose your spot on the pool deck based on where the sun is shining (or isn’t shining) and where the crowds are (or are not). However, that much-sought-after quiet spot to read or catch a cat-nap is sometimes elusive.

However, what many don’t know is that the club uses Sonos, a highly advanced music system that divides the pool deck into zones. Members in each zone can hear different music played at different noise levels. According to Tim Auerhahn, Aquatics Director, those in search of a serene place to read should head to the East deck (near the apartments) or the South deck (near the tennis courts). The music in these zones is generally much quieter.

Category: Pool[singlepic id=16 w=320 h=240 float=left]

Secret: Workouts in the Water

If you’re looking for a way to mix up your daily workout, train for a triathlon, or swim more laps in less time, look no further than the Adult Fitness Swim program. Your coach will put you through a competitive-style practice in the pool. You’ll receive individualized attention because the group is small, and your coach will put together your entire week of water workouts. This year’s coach has a great pedigree in swimming. The session begins on June 2nd, and you can sign up at the front desk.

Category: Mind/Body

Secret: Pilates Reformer Training is All About Results

Want to strengthen your core and transform the way your body looks, feels and performs? Check out Pilates Reformer Training, which is gaining in popularity because of the results achieved by those who have taken it. Check out the information wall for the schedule, and then sign up at the front desk.

Category: Mind/Body

Secret: Start Your Weekend Off Right with Guided Meditation

Before you pitch the office printer into an open field or begin harassing your co-workers about your missing stapler, you might want to try a little meditation. Every Friday morning from 8:20 until 8:40, you can attend a guided meditation class. No experience is necessary, and you can either wear your workout gear or your professional clothes.

Category: Front Desk

Secret: Yet Another Use For Your Cell

Keep misplacing your membership keytag? Check into the front desk with your cell instead! Simply take a photo of the barcode on your membership card with your cell phone’s camera, and then use the image on your phone to check in at the front desk.

Category: Housekeeping and Facilities

Secret: Keepin’ It Clean and Orderly

If you’ve ever been crushed upon finding your favorite treadmill out of working order, you can help bring it back to life sooner simply by picking up the phone. Members can dial #264 from any public phone at the club to access the voicemail box of the Housekeeping and Facilities Hotline. Let staff members know of an area in need of housekeeping attention, a broken piece of equipment, or a rack that requires towels. Messages are checked three times a day.

Category: The Spa at Midtown[singlepic id=13 w=320 h=240 float=right]

Secret: Package Makes Perfect

It’s shower, wedding, and graduation season, and a gift of luxury and relaxation from The Spa at Midtown is sure to please. You can purchase a soothing massage, rejuvenating facial, or a stylish nail service, or package them together and save 10%. And don’t forget to stop in for a treatment for yourself. You’re worth it.

Category: Events

Secret: First Tri’s a Charm

Competition will be fierce among the triathletes competing in Midtown’s very first Mini-Triathlon. You’ll swim, spin, and run for 15 minutes each (kids ages 7-14 will compete in three 10-minute sections), and then you’ll get to see where you rank among the club’s tri-stars. Tim Auerhahn says this event will sell out, so sign up early.

Category: Business Office

Secret: My Kids Bought How Many Bagels?

Curious about the price of that cafe smoothie, or want to double-check your monthly Midtown expenses? Your up-to-the-minute club transactions are just a few clicks away. Head to midtown.com/rochester, and click on Member Login in the upper-right corner. Log in with your username and password (or create an account if you haven’t already), and you can not only check your daily purchases, but also your past statements as well.

Do you have a lesser-known aspect about the club you’d like to share with fellow members? Let’s hear it!