The instructor began the class by having us all hold onto the bar and do little squat thingies down towards the ground. We were supposed to stand with the heels of our feet pointed towards each other and our toes in opposite directions, kind of like Charlie Chaplin. Or a penguin. I dunno. We then did a series of awkward ballet stretches that were in 2nd position or something. I didn’t know what any of these ballet terms were. The only French I know is whatever I can remember from ten weeks of seventh grade foreign language class and that one song from The Little Mermaid.

Anyway, the rest of the class pretty much consisted of the teacher explaining something for thirty seconds and then making us do some ridiculous ten step process immediately afterwards. Remember that episode of I Love Lucy where Lucy’s assembling chocolates on a conveyor belt, but then the belt speeds up so she can’t keep up? That’s pretty much how I felt trying to follow the teacher’s directions. It was a lot of “point your toes, pull in your stomach, straighten your leg.” Every so often I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and I often looked bewildered and vaguely irritated, and the stuffy studio and piano player weren’t helping. (Yes, a woman plays piano next to us during class while the instructor tries to talk over her. No, she wasn’t playing ragtime. Yes, I wish she were.)

L2 and Chelsea asked me how I liked ballet Pilates after our first class finished up. They seemed amused with my reluctance and told me that they felt equally clunky and awkward when they took it in the fall. However, apparently they became much more flexible at the end of the class, so hopefully I’ll at least get some benefit out of skipping across the room and pretending to feel graceful. At the very least, my favorite falafel place is right across the street so I can always reward my efforts with a jumbo gyro and rice (which I did tonight).

Teresa teaches the swim conditioning class, and for good reason. She swam for the University of Nevada-Reno and is one fast mofo. My triathlon trainer is often the first female out of the water during races, and she was the fastest female swimmer in her age division at the Kona World Championships. She is pretty much twice as fast as me in the water. It’s depressing. I remember that for my first open water swim she gave me like a 5 minute head start before swimming after me, and she and I got to the buoy at the same time. Sigh.

Anyway, I signed up for an hour of interval bike training and then did the swim conditioning class immediately afterwards. I’m not that hungry in the mornings so all I had to eat before working out was 3/4 of a Kashi Go Lean bar and some water. By the end of my dual workout I was ready to devour a mid-size farm animal.

Betsy was my swim conditioning buddy that morning. We started by squatting down and chucking a huge weighted ball back and forth to each other, then we did about 40 triceps dips. After more ball passes and a second set of dips I was already feeling the dreaded jell-o arm effect…and we were only about 10 minutes into the workout. Oh God, I was in trouble.

Let me pause and show you roughly what my triceps look like:

I have the arm strength of a feeble cartoon octogenarian, and every exercise during this class was exploiting them with sadistic, unrelenting glee.

Teresa made me get on the Vasa trainer, where I repeatedly failed to properly pull my arms back in the “catch” position. My wimpy arms were quivering under the teeny amount of weight Teresa had given me. After I half-assed about 20 reps, I switched with Betsy and dejectedly watched her adjust the tension and hammer out a ton of swim strokes with perfect form. I wish I had Betsy’s triceps. But I don’t. I have Mr. Burns-esque triceps.

After 45 minutes of non-stop triceps abuse, I headed home to shower and get ready for work. I knew I’d be in trouble when I could already feel the soreness of my arms a couple hours after the class ended. Sure enough, the next day I felt like Ralphie’s brother from A Christmas Tale, only instead of not being able to put my arms down, I couldn’t raise them more than halfway. I was rockin’ John McCain arms the entire weekend. Showering was hell, pulling my hair back was hell, rolling on deodorant was hell, changing shirts was hell. Jason quickly got tired of hearing my agonized shrieks whenever he’d try to hug, squeeze, or otherwise vaguely touch my arms and lats:

[Jason and I are laying on the couch watching TV. He adjusts his weight and brushes up against my arm.]
Me: “Aghhhhhhh, don’t do that!”
Jason: “What?”
Me: “You hit me!”
Jason: “I barely touched you!”
Me: “Well it hurt! Don’t do that!”
Jason: “You’ve got to be kidding me…”
Me: “Seriously, I am so sore…so, you’re coming to the class with me next week, right?”

You know how some people are like “I love feeling sore after a workout! It’s so satisfying!”? Well, I’m all for post-workout soreness but this was just obscene. Seriously. Friends don’t let friends get that sore. (I’m looking in your direction, Teresa.) Anyway, even though I got my ass kicked and my wimpy arms got bitch-slapped left and right, I’m determined to take the class every week to strengthen up and hopefully shave some minutes off my swim time. If nothing else then at least maybe I’ll be able to do a frickin’ pull up by the end of the season (wanna help me with that, T?).

The yoga instructor was giving us pleasant-sounding instructions amid the New Age music and the white Christmas lights. She kept flicking her eyes over to me, having noticed the Outsider vibes I was giving off. I don’t blame her for staring — I was the only person in the room wearing a tank top and exercise shorts, so I must have looked downright nutty compared to the fashionable yogaphiles in leg warmers, almost pants, and off-the shoulder sweaters. I felt like I was in a room full of Flashdance extras.

We started the class off with a few minutes of meditation. The instructor told us to close our eyes and just “relax and let the day’s events melt away.” I found that it was difficult to close my eyes and relax while loud trash talking permeated the room from the adjacent basketball court. It’s not easy to ignore repeated shouts of “AGHHHHH!” and “Not in MY house!” Somehow, everyone else in the room managed to close their eyes and appeared to go to their happy places while I looked around and gawked at them. (I do the same thing at dinners whenever the family insists on saying grace before we eat.)

From there we did a lot of stretchy stuff and pretended to be various animals. In the course of an hour I was a dog, an alligator, a snake, an eagle, a “happy baby,” and other creatures. It’s like we were starring in our own version of Michael Jackson’s Black or White video. (Speaking of the “dog” moves, whenever the instructor told us to “get in the up dog position,” I resisted the urge to cheekily say “What’s up dog?” in hopes that she’d respond with “Not much, what’s up with you?” I’m such a dork.) I kept up with the moves while stifling chicken quesadilla burps and silently cursing myself for eating Mexican for lunch.

At the end of the workout the instructor had us lay flat on the ground and close our eyes while she went around the room and “adjusted” people. I laid there and found out that “getting adjusted” consisted of her walking over to me and holding my legs up in the air for a few seconds, then gently placing them back on the floor. I’m not sure what the purpose of these adjustments are other than to realign my chi or something. Maybe my aura looked crooked.

Overall, yoga wasn’t too shabby. I felt it was mostly easy, with only a couple of poses that were difficult. I can see the benefit of doing yoga once a week or so for stretching purposes. The class was palatable — the hippie factor was at a minimum (minus the trendy outfits and New Age music) and the instructor’s annoyance level pinged low. The only eye-rolling thing I remember was when she told us to “picture all those toxins escaping from your organs.” I imagine this is why people think it’s acceptable to rip farts during class…