"freedom from choice is what you want..."

I joined Hendrick Health Club.

I was given the chance to sample one of their classses. I made the wrong choice:

BodyStep
(step aerobics - just like it sounds)

I went because my friend Seth (who actually teaches that same kind of class) was going to take it as just a participant and so I followed just because I knew him.

There was loud music and 2 Crazy Skinny Bitches* up on a stage. There was lots of confused flailing on my part. When I woke up from the exercise-induced hypnotic state that the aforementioned Crazy Skinny Bitches put me in, I was all sweaty and lots of people (old people mostly) were telling me not to "get discouraged" and that I did "really well."

I actually didn't feel that bad until the words of encouragement -- they had sort of the opposite effect.

Thank goodness all the classes are relatively poorly lit (for the very reason you would think: us fatties don't like the idea of other people watching us as we gyrate.)

* they were actually really nice, but anyone who does all that choreographed stepping & jumping for the better part of an hour and smiles cheerfully throughout qualifies as a "CSB."

So the recommended attendance for a gym so you don't get burned out is 3x a week. Tomorrow will still be relatively hot. Do I walk or do I try another class? My choices are RPM (spinning?), BodyPump (weights) or BodyVive (it says "low-impact cardio & strength class.")

BodyVive sounds like a winner, but it's the later one (6:45) -- I really wanted one I could hit right after work. 'Course I could always get up earlier so I could leave work earlier (we have a slightly flexible schedule @ work) for BodyJam ("dance-inspired workout.")

Or... saints preserve us!!! I could get up in the wee hours and go BEFORE work. No... I've come along way in the last 4 weeks, but I'm not THAT far yet!

Eek.

"it's high time to choose your destiny..."

Yesterday was for endurance.

I managed to walk something like 6 & 1/4 miles (4x around Red Bud.) 10K

There's an endurance event in about 2 weeks. Because it's not how FAR you go, but how long - it says it's a "walker friendly" event. It's 3 hrs and 6 hours. My walk yesterday took a hair over 2 hours and I think I could have gone for the full three, but I started getting a pretty wicked blister on the botton of my foot. I'd like to have done it just so I could say ahead of time that I could (like I did with the 5K), but this time I am hoping that maybe just getting 2/3rd of the way means I could PROBABLY do it the day of. It's a night time event. If I last the 3 hours, it would be 9pm-12pm... seems like fun - to be out walking late like that. Surely, it can't be as hot then... surely.

Today - even though I'm doing ice packs and Ibuprofen as advised by my cousin the P.A. - I was hurting & decided to take a rest day. I know all the online stuff says you need to take at least ONE rest day a week, but I hadn't been.

So I decided to go for some nice, restful yoga.

HA.

I haven't tried yoga in a long time.

Yea, I'm not real flexible. I used to be. This sounds rather perverse, but a kid at school once paid me a quarter to watch me put both my legs behind my head (no, I was NOT wearing a dress.)

I actually feel more worn out from the yoga than I've felt from the walking EVER.

Also...

I think I've narrowed down my choices for a health club to join. I'm leaning toward the one affiliated with the hospital (Hendrick.) It's on the north side (con), but it's got the machines, classes AND a pool (pro pro pro.) And somehow I just feel like a hospital's health club isn't going to tell me to do something crazy if it was ultimately bad for me (I just remember my World Gym membership and how they had me doing stuff that was killing my knees.)

So -- I've submitted an online form to get them to contact me and I've requested that my friend Seth (who instructs there) give me his professional opinion about the joint.

* * *

AND I've just discovered the option to add other authors to this blog. Anyone out there starting to "exercise on purpose" who wants to chronicle it?

"Upwards to the vanguard..."

Walked today even though it was still hellaciously hot.

Had company today -- my dear friend Tara. We made it 1x around Red Bud, but the heat was just too much. We went at around 2pm - I was going to wait, but -same as last night- it wasn't slated to get cooler again until the wee hours.

We are gonna get on top of this thing and do it right -- she lives right by the middle school she and I went to as youths. Tomorrow we're gonna hit that for our laps... if I wake up in a timely enough fashion to call and rouse her. I've stayed up a hair late tonight... might end up being 11ish before my little eyeballs open and I get moving. It'll probably be 112 then for all I know.

Will mix things up with her Tae Bo tapes and perhaps whatever else we can dial up on Netflix for workout purposes when it's just too hot to go safely go outside.

Next weekend, if things go well, Tara will be attacking her first 5K walk -- something I found in Hamlin called "Runnin' the Buff."

I've already got my registration all done for the Susan G Komen Breast cancer thing in Dallas in Oct. If I don't break her of ever wanting to do this again, maybe she'll want to do that too.

:-)

"Feelin' hot hot HOT"

I hate Abilene for a multitude of reasons. Today I hate it because of the weather. I'm not sure exactly hot it was when I walked today, but it maxed out at 106 - it's 91 right now and it's 10:30 (I walked 7:30-8:30).

I shouldn't have walked. I should have stayed instead and played on my Wii or something because I'd say this is actually a step backward. I have now coupled walking with an image of negative reinforcement instead of positive -- walking, drenched in sweat, my pace slower than usual... feeling like I'm being punished. No, this will never do.

It's supposed to be worse tomorrow. Summer isn't for several more weeks, but, yea, this is pretty par-for-the-West-Texas-course.

This means I have to make a decision: do I buy a gym membership? I've been thinking about it a lot lately and there are a lot more choices to consider than before. Abilene has a lot more gyms, more options. I have had 2 gym memberships in my life - once when I was probably twelve (Power Shack - the first time Mom drug me to Weight Watchers), and then once in college (World Gym - it's closed down now) - I went gung ho for about three months and then just stopped.

So if I go by previous experience, I won't use it.

...or will I? If it means, I can avoid the blast furnance I walked through today? I think I might.

So: Hendrick Health, Power Shack, Anytime Fitness, or the YMCA. Power Shack and the Y have pools and I think that's probably important - if nothing else, for variety. Anytime Fitness has the "anytime" thing going for it - I could wake up in the middle of the night and decide I just really really need to hit a treadmill or something... I don't know much about Hendrick 'cept it's connected w/ the hospital and my friend Seth teaches some sort of horrible "crack of dawn" ass kicking class there.

The dilemma I'm dealing with here is the fact that walking is free (mildly boring), my recumbent bike (extremely boring) and the Wii (pretty boring) are long since paid for. Comitting to a gym membership means I won't flake out on this... and flaking out is my style.

Anyone who watches me crochet and tells me, oh golly, I must have oodles of patience, doesn't know me very well. I get bored instantly. Crafts are probably the one area where I do have some amount of patience and even though I've been knitting and crocheting pretty steadily for several years now, I haven't touched a counted cross stitch kit (my old love) in seven years.

For awhile, I lived for WoW, later I was crazy for gardening, one summer, all I wanted to do was go fishing. Each time, I lived for my new obsession and each time I woke up one morning and didn't want it anymore.

I guess I should stop holding myself to my old M.O., I've flaked out on a lot of things, but I'm 30 now. There's no telling what that means. In a year, if my efforts pay off, I could take up Championship Bodybuilding or have an infomercial about not being fat anymore ala Susan Powter.

So, yea, I'm gonna join somewhere.

The question is where?

I am newly relinquished of my most recent obsession (a band I won't name & an experience I won't get in to right now) so I'm looking for a new place to belong. Who knows? Best case scenario, I can pour all my passion in to the pursuit of bettering myself the same way I used to do trailing fruitlessly after them.

We shall see... we kind of have to, the Hot Time has only just begun....

"Nice. Let's go through this again..."

I've undertaken "fitness" again.

As I've gone for walks in the last several weeks, I've thought I had better document it (hell, it might actually WORK this time!) and though I've left various pieces of myself on the web for all to see since I was 17, none of them felt right to return to. None felt like home.

I haven't blogged since my friend Earl died - a year and a half ago.

The only thought I've had about that was from the end of one of my favorite books when I was a kid, "Go Ask Alice" (yes, yes, I know it's fake, but at the time I thought it was the most heart-wrenchingly real thing I'd ever read.) At the end, she decides to stop writing in her diary - that adults had a support network of people to talk to and didn't need to write it all down.

I haven't felt the tickle... not even a little this whole time... until now.

So: this is my "establishing shot"... I'll get to the messy stuff later (where I've been, where I'm going & why... and why in the world I think that - at 30 - I might finally get anywhere near my goals when I've failed to do so thus far since I was in elementary school.)

It's late.

:-)

... but this should prove worthwhile.