Recently moved to Mass. and am looking for a gym that has a decent pool (i.e., at least 25 m) as well as some cardio and weight machines. I'm living in mid-cambridge (between central and harvard), working in downtown boston (close to south station). Currently belong to BSC, but their branch with the pool is a bit out of the way for me (over by the Museum of Science). Any suggestions?
I live in harvard square…and there are no gyms with pools that I know of. actually lift at a place called Mike’s in Cambridge (fresh pond) but swim at Blodgett Pool at Harvard. Let me know if you have any other questions regarding the area.
When I was at Harvard (Kennedy School of Government) for a month, I was able to swim at both of the university’s pools. Check them out. The old pool is a POS, but the new pool is good. You may be able to buy some kind of pass to use them.
MIT has an excellent new athletic facility - the gym is pretty sweet and the new pool is EXTREMELY sweet. You’d have to buy some sort of membership, and I don’t know how the price compares to a commercial gym (I’m a grad student, so it’s really cheap). There’s a good masters swim program with a bunch of triathletes across the whole spectrum of abilities and 14 or so practices a week.
cheers,
Rob
http://web.mit.edu/swim-masters/
I travel to Boston 10-12x/year and I have found a good gym at the Ritz-Carlton Boston Common. Pricey if you stay at the Ritz ($20/day) but monthly memberships may be reasonable. I don’t know. The club has a 25 yd. pool, they do have an a.m. masters program (though I haven’t participated b/c it started too late for my schedule the day I swam there). Worth checking out.
If you are desperate the bally’s at Porter square has a 22m pool which is tiny but it’ll get the job done if you have no other options. Just a thought.
Check out the YMCAs as well. The facility on Huntington Avenue next to Northeastern University is a bit old and often overcrowded, but it does the job. If you don’t mind traveling, the Oak Square YMCA in Brighton is worth a look also, as it sports a fairly new (2 or 3 yrs.?) pool and the masters program there is quite good. I would also recommend the facility at MIT, its beautiful.