Sucking Wind

I'm alive! I have been short on blog material for a while and couldn't put my finger on why I didn't have the inspiration to write. This morning, it dawned on me. I haven't been embarrassing myself in public enough. We all know how I like to make myself look like a fool when the world is watching. Well, my friends, I'm back in action! First, some background.

Last weekend my handsome husband and I attended the wedding of some close friends of ours. It was a lovely affair. What WAS NOT lovely was my inability to fit into ANY of my dresses! Not a single one. I would love to tell you that it's because my boobs have grown so much that I just needed new tops but that would be a bold faced lie. I've gotten chubby. There. I said it. My pants are tight, I can't walk up the stairs without getting winded and my legs jiggle a little too much. It was during the dress trying on process that I decided to do something about it. Enter: Crossfit DGA.

I have seen several friends of mine transform from "meh" to MEOW by going to Crossfit. Now, I've been a member of gyms before, but I know myself a little too well. I need someone yelling at me to exercise or else I'll hop on an eliptical for 30 minutes and be done. I needed to see results SOON so I knew that I needed to take radical measures. Being a total chicken, I absolutely had to have a friend accompany me on my first trip, so I tricked Rachel into going. She's so enthusiastic and bubbly about everything so of course she was game. I can always count on her! We decided on the smaller 7:30 pm class to get us started off.

On the drive to our first class, I honestly wanted to throw up. I had visions of people running in the mud and bleeding and sweating and crying in my head. I thought that the instructor was going to be Satan incarnate with whips and a megaphone screaming in my ear. I contemplated turning around several times but I couldn't let perky Rachel down so I stuck with the game plan.

When we walked in, the facility was quite unassuming. Some bars for pull-ups lined the walls, boxes stacked in a corner, "kettle bells" and weights dispersed throughout. It looked innocuos enough.

One must not judge the book by the cover.

The warm up kicked my arse. We ran 400 meters, came back and lunged forwards and then backwards, we skipped, hopped, "Frankensteined", and did all other kinds of gloriously painful stretches. By then Rachel and I were pouring sweat. Eric, the instructor, then pulled us aside to work on form and introduce us to Crossfit. And boy, what an introduction it was. We squatted and squatted and squatted.

Then we did some more squats and something hilarious happened. He asked us to run to the edge of the fence across the street and back.

*I will note here that I felt like an asshat wearing my City Bar t-shirt because there was a KID training with us. I was annoyed with his endless energy and flexibility. I know it wasn't his fault that I was so out of shape but MAN! He was unstoppable! I wish someone would bottle his energy so I can shoot up with it before I go back!

**In my previous experience with squats, you put your hips back like you are going to sit in a chair. This is NOT what we were doing. I think my butt almost touched the floor. It probably didn't really but that's what it felt like. You do 30 of those bad boys and go for a jog and get back to me on the outcome.

"Oh, sure. No problem!" I stupidly thought.

I can't explain the science of what happened to my body, but there was some miscommunication between my brain and my legs/knees/ankles and somehow my arms got dragged into the big mess. When I tried to take my first step, it felt like my joints had been replaced with rubber bands and my bones were noodles. Not the uncooked kind, but the soggy ones that sat in water for too long and got swollen and gross. We looked like the Golden Girls shuffling across the road. Our arms were going twice as fast as our feet and every time I did anything that remotely resembled running my ankles did this wonky thing where they turned in and my knees went sideways.We were a wreck. We laughed so hard at ourselves that I thought I was going to pee on myself. I had to do the whole "stop and cross your legs" thing. Don't judge, you know you do it, too.

When we got back inside we repeated the process. It was brutal.

Once we were granted permission to leave, we trudged back to our cars. I think that I actually had to lift my leg to put it in the car. It was like I had no control of my limbs! When I got home, I almost tumbled down the hill to my front door because I couldn't stop myself once I got some momentum up. It was so pathetic. Polly was watching me through the window with her head cocked to the side. I'm sure she was wondering why I was walking like I had just had a stroke.

Even after all of the pain and agony, Rachel and I both enthusiastically agreed that this was something worth doing again and that we would join. It's always good to have an accountability partner! Stay tuned for more stories from the dungeon.

 (Day 2: The Aftermath and Subsequent Workout is coming next and it's a good one!)

Holla,
SM