Gym Jones — Best-named workout facility in the world

It's an invitation-only workout center in Salt Lake City founded and run by Mark Twight, author of "Extreme Alpinism," that is "more torture chamber than Sports Club/L.A.; squats and dead lifts, not treadmill runs, supply the cardio," was how Robert Ito described it in a November 26, 2006 New York Times story about how the actors who would play Spartans in the film adaptation of Frank Miller's "300" trained there.

The article continued, "Under Mr. Twight's tutelage, the actors and stunt people endured a two-and-a-half month boot camp before the cameras rolled. The diet was brutal — meat, leaves and berries, Mr. Twight said — and the workouts even worse."

Like it says on the homepage: "Gym Jones is not a cozy place."

Though you'll never see me up on a mountain, I found Twight's book

completely engrossing — and said so.