Best Outdoor Pool Makeover 2014 | La Alma Recreation Center | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Outdoor Pool Makeover

La Alma Recreation Center

Urban pools are usually rectangular holes in the ground made of concrete and filled with chlorinated water (and sometimes leaves, lost toys and empty Cheetos bags). But when Denver Parks and Recreation decided to remake the outdoor pool next to the La Alma Recreation Center, which sits in a neighborhood chock-full of kids, it went far beyond an ordinary rectangle. Though there are still six lanes where lap swimmers can front-crawl calories away, the pool also sports a diving board and a twisty-tunnel water slide so tall that adults brave enough to give it a whirl have been known to whoop with joy when the ride is over. The pool also has an exemplary kiddie area, complete with things that rain water down, things that spit water up, a padded toddler slide and a freaking whirlpool — which is big enough for grownups, too. Not that we'd know or anything.

  • 1325 W. 11th Ave., Denver, 80204 Map

Best New Boulder Gym for Everyone

Anytime Fitness

Every Monday, Greg Plavidal, owner of the Boulder Anytime Fitness franchise, runs a special session for a group of women between the ages of fifty and eighty who used to belong to a now-shuttered Curves. Some of these women were nervous about training at a regular gym, but Plavidal's sessions are gentle, organized and easily adjusted to a participant's fitness level. For those wanting to take their workouts to the max, there's also boot camp — loud, hot, sweaty and unrelenting — with ex-marine Korey Reyelts, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Boulder boasts many gyms, but Plavidal didn't see the kind of place he wanted there — affordable, with a friendly, bright atmosphere that was neither a country club nor a grimy grunt-and-sweat shop — so he created one that is accommodating to clients at every level, from college athletes to retirees.

Best Luxury Detox for Less

Pura Vida's Sunday Afternoon Meltdown

Pura Vida has long been a mecca for the exercise elite — a members-only gym with state-of-the-art facilities and top-of-the-line workout programming. But earlier this year, the fitness fortress opened its doors to non-members with the introduction of the Sunday Afternoon Meltdown, a combination yoga and meditation class focused on detoxing and preparing for the week ahead. Thirty bucks gets you in on a one-hour heated yoga session followed by a half-hour guided meditation, capped off with a specialty herbal elixir to sip while you take advantage of the club's steam room and hot tub.

Best Place to Train Like Rocky

20th Street Gym

Far from the corporate-chain experience, the 20th Street Gym is the workout facility of hard knocks. The city's oldest rec center, located in the heart of downtown, 20th Street is a no-frills training facility, complete with a fully stocked weight room, shiny cardio machines, an indoor pool and basketball court, and weekly yoga and spin classes. But the best workout in the city comes from the gym's boxing program, offering real in-the-ring training for kids and adults alike. The grownups' classes are a nonstop circuit involving a speed bag and heavy-bag hitting, jumping rope and one-on-one guidance from expert coaches — something that no chain health club can match.

Best Place to Dream About Calories While Burning Them

24 Hour Fitness Highlands Garden

Like most locations in the national chain, 24 Hour Fitness in Highland is packed every day of the week with eager nine-to-fivers, gym rats and hardbodies elbowing for treadmills. What's unique to this spot is its penchant for combining cardio-machine workouts and foodie television. No matter the time of day, at least two of the many TVs entertaining fitness freaks are locked on the Food Network. Members at this gym are as intent on sweating it out as they are on watching Guy Fieri chowing on roadside barbecue or Giada whipping up homemade Italian specialties. They're adding calories just by watching, but at least they're working them off.

Best Gear on the Cheap

Wilderness Exchange Unlimited

Located across from Denver's flagship REI store, Wilderness Exchange Unlimited feels like a smaller version of its retail neighbor, a two-story temple to skis, backpacks, boots, climbing gear and everything else you need for playing in the mountains. But unlike REI, Wilderness Exchange specializes in sniffing out cheap deals on overstock, seconds and lightly used consignments and passing them on to customers, so you can get shred-ready without shredding your credit rating in the process. The shop's knowledgeable staff and generous demo program, which lets patrons test-drive six ski setups for $120, makes deciding where to sink your money a snap.

Best Skate Park

Arvada Skate Park

Skaters, bikers, rollerbladers and even those confused kids riding scooters were given a wonderful gift when Arvada brought in Team Pain to build the Arvada Skate Park. The park, located in the northeast corner of Arvada's Memorial Park, comprises features for all skill levels, from first-time pushers to seasoned thrashers, and there's a street section with handrails, stair gaps, bank-to curbs, and original banked walls that fit perfectly in the landscape of the allotted area. The transition portion of the park, which includes a snake run meandering from one end to the other, offers deep vert-bowls separated by a spine, halfpipes ranging from three feet to ten feet, and enough flow to maintain a solid run throughout the entire course without pushing.

Best Terrain Park

Breckenridge

It's no accident that two of the five Olympic ski and snowboard qualifiers were held at Breckenridge in the lead-up to Sochi, or that many of the top competitors — American and otherwise — have made Breck their home mountain. And it's not just the pro courses and the experts-only Freeway park that pass muster: Breck's terrain-park system topped Freeskier magazine's Top 10 list for the third year in a row, with nods to beginner parks Bonanza and Trygve's and the "intermediate" Park Lane's features (including 20- to 45-foot gap jumps, ahem). Ready to really send it? Freeway is as good as it gets.

Best Halfpipe

Vail

The sloppy, slushy ditch that helped dethrone Shaun White at the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi had nearly all of the top competitors clamoring for better conditions, and the name that kept coming up was Snow Park Technologies. The Nevada-based company was responsible for the courses at the Dew Tour, X Games and Burton U.S. Open this year, with nary a complaint. Our honors go to Vail's Burton U.S. Open pipe on Golden Peak, however, for helping to send Colorado's own Taylor Gold to the top of the podium. The Steamboat Springs local missed the cut for the finals with a fourteenth-place finish in Sochi, but found redemption two weeks later in front of his friends and family back home in a perfect pipe under a clear blue sky. Is it time to finally bring the Winter Olympics to Colorado?

Best Place to Catch Air(bag)

Progresh

Ready to step up your big-air game but not to accept the looming consequences of landing on your head? Work on your aerial awareness (and your cojones) at Progresh before taking new tricks out into the real world. The indoor ski, snowboard, BMX and skateboarding facility opened in Thornton in 2013, offering a full schedule of classes, camps, private lessons and drop-in sessions, as well as field-trip-friendly group activities and corporate team-building sessions. But the facility's main attraction is an indoor airbag that was made specifically for action-sports training — and soft landings. Progresh also features trampolines, skate ramps and a digital editing room for dialing in those mid-air selfies.

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