Beat the heat in the Z Center by Melis A. '08

This morning I went for a miserably hot run along a busy road by my house and I decided that I really missed the Charles River and the Zesiger Center. A few of you were curious about the facilities, so I thought I’d post some pictures. Plus, you can use the Z Center for free during the school year and you’re likely to have gym classes here, so why not get familiar with it.

Note: I had taken these on a Sunday morning before the gym filled up, to avoid being spotted and identified as the creepy girl who is taking pictures of sweaty people for future blackmail purposes. It’s usually more crowded…but as long as you don’t go between 4-6pm you won’t have to wait for a machine.

A view from outside (it’s distorted…sorry, the panoramic feature on my camera doesn’t always cooperate):

A dark view of the lobby:

Walk up the stairs from another entrance, and you enter the first of two exercise floors. There are cubbies on the right to put your stuff, and two locker rooms downstairs:

Continuing down the second floor of the Z Center…just a small sampling of the vast collection of treadmills:

Walk a little further and you reach the weight area, as well as more cardio equipment:

If you look out of the windows on this floor, you can see our beautiful Olympic-sized pool (ranges from 7-20 feet, or something like that) and the training pool:

And for completeness, here’s a view of the pool from the ground floor, looking through some decorated glass:

On the third floor, there are more weight and cardio machines, another area for floor exercises, an indoor court (called the MAC court) for gym classes/ soccer/basketball, and squash courts. There’s also a huge indoor track field, but I couldn’t get in because I was taking these pictures right before Finals Week and the courts are used as testing facilities:

Heading back to the first floor, there is a big area called the Rockwell Cage:

This list is by no means complete; there’s also the Johnson Athletics Center (which has a huge ice rink in the winter, but was no longer there when I took pictures) and the DuPont gym (which has a huge area for gymnastics and basketball, and smaller rooms for the martial arts, yoga, pilates, etc.)

P.S. You get a clean towel each time you visit using a towel card (for a one-time $5 deposit), and can enter a lottery for a locker in the DuPont locker room. Oh! and I almost forgot to mention that the DuPont locker room has brand new saunas!! :)

P.P.S. I’m probably forgetting some things…feel free to chime in.