Welcome back students and snowbirds!  We are currently offering a 3-month membership for $199. If you’re a student or senior (age 60 or above), your price is only $175 (plus tax). These 3-month memberships include most classes (see our class schedule for a complete listing). We hope to see you soon!

We did great in the Concept2 Rowing Challenges.  So many people who didn’t even used to row, started and conquered!  We’ve rowed over 6 million meters in the 3 challenges we’ve undertaken.  Now it’s time for something different!

There’s a new challenge in town – and across the country.  It’s a great way to get people to ride their bikes more, and use their cars less, although a lot of us are doing it purely to ride our bikes more (if the driving becomes less, so much the better!)  Anyway, Rayne and Ute are in the process of putting together some teams.  There may be teams of underdogs – those who do not consider themselves to be cyclists, there will likely be a triathlon training team, and more!  Each team is limited to 10.  If you’d like to join a team (there’s no better motivation), then check out this link and let Ute and/or Rayne know you want to participate.  We’ll let you know what teams have been set up so that we can get you on the right team.  This great challenge is being sponsored by Local Motion, Earl’s Cyclery, GMBC, Vermont Bicycle and Pedestrian Coalition, and more!  Thank you to Jeff Cohn for encouraging us to participate!

Shelburne Health & Fitness is considering the possibilty of building a swimming pool.  Before we invest too much time or money into this process, we’d love to know how much community support there would be for such a venture.  If you would like to see the addition of a swimming pool, and you feel as though you’d use it, please click here to sign a petition.  And by all means, if you know others who would like to see a pool offered here, direct them to the petition as well ro share the link via facebook, twitter, etc.

It doesn’t happen often, but every now and then, an outstanding trainer who we feel fits perfectly with our members comes our way.  We are thrilled to now have Paul Romasco, ACSM CPT available to everyone who is interested in improving their strength and fitness levels.  Whether you are interested in getting fit or going further into body building, Paul may very well be the trainer you’ve been looking for!  He offers a 3-session introductory package for $149 as well as a free consultation if you’d like to talk to him about your goals and what he has to offer.  Feel free to come talk to him at the front desk, email him at paul.romasco@hotmail.com or give him a call on his cell at (401) 487-9285.

When Shelburne Health & Fitness purchased the Field House Athletic Club in October 2010, we went right to work with renovations and were thrilled with the result.  Now we’re on to phase II which includes enlarging the Men’s Locker Room (finally!), moving the front desk to the door, moving our offices, creating much needed storage space and creating a new private Pilates Studio.  This will be followed by the creation of a new Yoga studio and quiet stretching area.  We hope you’re as excited about the renovations as we are!

We had so much fun with the 2011 Holiday Rowing Challenge through Concept2, that we’ve been forming a new virtual rowing team.  The January 2012 Challenge is a team challenge to see how many meters a team can row in a month.  We’re well under way, and as of this writing, our team is placed 27th out of 255 teams!  We’d love to have YOU join the team!  None of our current team members were regular rowers prior to the Holiday challenge and that team came in 96th place out of 1470 affiliate teams with over 1.5 million meters rowed.  It’s THAT motivating to be on the team.

Being part of a rowing team has been GREAT FUN!  Even though there is no minimum requirement for how many meters any participant must row, you’re going to find that you will WANT to row far more than you may now think just by being on the team.  It is great motivation – just ask anyone who’s already on the team!

If you would like to join the team, just go to www.concept2.com and sign up for an online log (it’s free).  Once you have an online log, go to your online log page and click on the link for “Teams”.  On that new page, you’ll see a place where you can choose which team you’d like to be on.  Scroll down to find Shelburne Health & Fitness and select it.  You’ll be prompted to send an email to our Team Captain (Ute Talley).  There’s no need to put anything in the body of the email.  Concept2 will add the information that she needs to add you to the team, which she will then do.

The final step, once Ute has added you to the team will be for you to go back to the Teams page and click on the yellow highlighted link to indicate that you plan to be an active member of the team.  If you’re one of the next 5 to join the team, you’ll receive a free Concept2 logbook.  You can go ahead and start logging your meters right away and then enter them once you’re all set up online.

Consider joining us.  It really has been a blast and the enthusiasm in contagious!

As many of you know, we recently held a fund raiser to benefit the Mount Family Education Fund.  With the help of Sam Usen and Rob Gronkowski of the New England Patriots, and the generous donations of many of you, we were able to raise over $700 in a very short time!  Shelburne Health & Fitness and RaceVermont.com put all the names of those who contributed into a hat and drew out one lucky slip of paper.  Bob & Marcia Bristow of Shelburne, Vermont are the lucky winners of the calendar.  Thank you so much to everyone who donated.  Your donations will make a big difference in the lives of Stephen and Karen Mount’s children.

Want to exercise for a great cause – other than staying healthy?  Join Rayne, Ute and other SHF members in the 2011 Holiday Rowing Challenge.  Just row 100,000 or 200,000 meters between now and Christmas Eve and Concept2 will donate $.02 for every kilometer to a charity of your choice (The Vermont Disaster Relief Fund, The Red Cross, or Unicef).  100,000 meters isn’t as tough as you may think.  We’ll be posting results on the bulletin board.  It’s not too late to start! Click here for more details on the challenge, and then talk to anyone at the front desk to have your name put up on the poster where we’ll track the club’s progress.

You’ve probably walked by the Pilates Studio more times than you can count, but if you haven’t seen the equipment in use – or even tried it yourself, you have no idea what you’re missing!  Please drop in for our Pilates Open Studio on Thursday, November 3 at 5:30 pm to see what Pilates is all about.  If you’re tempted to give it a try after the Open Studio, take advantage of 3 introductory private lessons for only $99 offered only during our Open Studio!