I’ve done hot yoga a couple times. It’s not bad, but since I’m naturally a sweaty person, I’m literally the only one in the room whose shins are sweating because I’m perspiring so much. I end up in my shame corner soaking wet while these yoga goddesses in booty shorts, sports bras, and 12-packs are contorting their bodies into pretzels without even a strand of hair getting frizzy. It’s lame. This time around I bought a Living Social (or Groupon, or whatever the daily deal site was) special for a hot yoga place in Capitol Hill and my friend Lauren and I met up to try it out.

We showed up and filled out the “I won’t sue the facility if I sweat myself to death” forms, then dropped our stuff off in the locker room before stepping into the hot yoga room. The first thing I noticed (and smelled) was that the space was carpeted. Uh what? This is a 90-minute yoga session in which the room is heated to over 90 degrees and someone thought it’d be smart to carpet the floors? It stank like musty feet and stale armpit sweat. I was not thrilled.

Lauren and I set up shop in the back of the room. I spread out my brand new yoga mat that I bought off Amazon.com because apparently forest green is an unpopular mat color (pink, on the other hand, would have cost me a monthly car payment). The sinewy instructor entered and started the group off with a ridiculously long series of breaths and shouts. Everyone began to moan as if they were zombies, and I instinctively looked for the nearest ax or blunt object in case I needed to peg someone in the head and make my sweaty escape.

After the B.S. breathing, we began contorting and stretching and yoga-ing. The instructor kept firing off instructions one after another without pausing, making me wonder if she doubles as an auctioneer on the weekends. She’d bark at me and Lauren every so often whenever we didn’t contort to her liking, and she kept calling Lauren “Laura,” which got more and more awkward the longer we were in class.

Pretty soon I was drenched with sweat. I couldn’t see because whenever I’d bend over, all of the perspiration on my face would dump into my eyes. My towel was all spongy so it offered little reprieve. I sighed and kept telling myself that somehow this would help me survive the hot and humid runs in Costa Rica and Hawaii. At one point I looked down and saw that I was so saturated with sweaty nastiness that the scab on my knee (which I got from scraping it on the bottom of the pool during the previous week’s swim class, another reason why swim class is dumb) had hydrated itself and fallen off. It was now perched on my yoga mat in a soggy little ball.

My reaction:

Das nasty!

I was literally sous vide-ing myself to the point where parts of me were falling off. It was like shredding a slow cooked piece of pork. Four moves later I looked down and the scab was gone, probably absorbed into the Carpet of Horrors to join the kaleidoscope of DNA that will one day birth a mutant CHUDbaby who knows how to do the Feathered Peacock pose.

Finally the class ended and we escaped from the oven to the cool Seattle air. I weighed myself when I got home and saw that I was 2 1/2 lbs lighter, all of which had gotten absorbed into the nasty floor along with my knee scab. I felt like some sort of disgusting Johnny Appleseed.

I haven’t been back since I sweat my scab off, but I’ll probably drag myself to some more classes to see if it’ll help with the tropical race climate I’ll be subjected to in March and June. I haven’t accumulated any new scrapes or cuts, so this is my narrow window of opportunity to return without leaving a piece of me behind…

“Not by a long shot!” my chipper coach Teresa most likely exclaimed as she loaded up my workouts with classes and utter bullshit. For example, here are just the classes and group workouts I’ve got scheduled for this week:

Monday: dryland strength class (It sucked; I was tired and Bridget made us do burpees with a biceps curl, one of the poopiest circuit workouts along with triceps pushups, which she also made us do. I hate Bridget.)

Tuesday: track (in which I get to do a speed test which basically involves running as hard as you can for 30 minutes so Teresa can assign me new heart rate zones. FML.)

Wednesday: dryland strength, cycling class

Friday: swim class

Saturday: group run

Sunday: cycling class, swim class

That’s not even counting the additional swims (two) bike workout (one), core workouts (two), and runs (one) I’ve got this week. Tell my wife and kids (meaning “Jason” and “pie”) that I love them, because this girl is going to be living and breathing fitness for the next 10 months.

The clinic was held at a park, and Teresa would time us from our simulated swim to bike transition, and again from swim to run. She’d shout out our times with much excitement and encouragement, and I’d feel like a freakin’ champ because I was flying out of the fake water and to my little transition spot so speedily. “I so got this,” I thought. “I’mma be so gee dee fast in transition.” I even took notes and photos of the whole process so I could study it diligently and be the fastest mofo in T1 and 2:

A tidy transition setup

That same week, I had my first ever open water swim. Before the workout, I envisioned myself exiting the water like a total pro and expertly stripping off my wetsuit like I learned in the transition clinic. Then, of course, I actually got in the water and everything I learned flew out the window. It was May and Lake Washington was like 50 degrees, so our group didn’t so much swim as flop around in the water and screech due to the hardcore zipper sting (which is when the water seeps into your wetsuit from various entrances, usually the zipper, and chills you the eff out). My workout turned into a 15 minute flail fest as I dully punched the water with frozen fists and heavily plunked my feet in instead of exhibiting anything remotely resembling decent form.

Finally, when my icy torture was over, I trudged out of the water and attempted to do my “speedy” transition.” Unfortunately, the freezing temperatures + Madison beach stairs equaled me sporting windmill arms and rubber legs as I attempted to exit. I MC Skat Katted two steps forward, one step back, threatening to fall into the water more times than I’d care to admit. It was most definitely a sad sight to behold — I think Teresa trained me in 2008 thinking I was physically and mentally handicapped.

At last I managed to creep over to a safe distance away from the beach, where I tiredly pawed at my zipper pull, twirling around like an idiot until I had the strap in my tundra clutches. I yanked my suit down and promptly keeled over when trying to pull it off my legs. By the time I wrestled myself free from my waterproof sausage casing, it had been several minutes and I was pathetically tired from the effort. I had really put my transition clinic knowledge to good use.

Thankfully, practice makes less embarrassing (which is how the saying goes for me), and after enough races I can safely say I’m pretty decent at transitioning. The only thing I don’t do is start out with my cycling shoes on the bike — I tried it at another clinic and was pretty sucktastic at it, so I haven’t bothered to try it out during an actual race. I have considered slipping out of my cycling shoes as I roll into transition instead of running through T2 in them because my Speedplay cleats are clunky mother effers and virtually impossible to “run” in without rolling an ankle. Maybe it’s something I’ll work on this coming season…Teresa would just love it if I bugged her for another clinic so she can watch me zig zag around the park looking like a total spaz.

The class is supposed to be a mix of basic ballet and Pilates stretches, so I went in with the expectation that I’d be a wobbly, awkward mess since I am extremely clumsy and uncoordinated. (Seriously, ask Jason how often I drop something, spill on myself, run into things and trip over imaginary objects on a daily basis. The answer is “often.” The other day he just about died laughing after I squirted butterscotch all over my pants.) I arrived to class and saw that, unsurprisingly, the group of girls who were signed up were all wearing either yoga pants or ballet leotards, tights and ballet shoes. I, of course, was wearing a muddy pair of running shoes, athletic socks, running shorts and a sleeveless shirt. I dejectedly peeled my shoes and socks off, sighing about how sticky the worn wood floors felt under my bare feet.

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).

I want to improve a lot in 2009, and I figured that a huge area of opportunity would be improving my swim. I think I can shave anywhere from 5-15 minutes off my worst half Ironman swim time, depending on how much I train. So I cued up the training montage music and signed up for a dry land swim conditioning class that would help strengthen my body and improve my swim stroke, technique, and stamina.

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 Story, 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?).

I entered the dimly lit yoga room about a minute after the class started. It was full of men and women who were sitting cross-legged on yoga mats. I panicked when I thought it was BYOM (Bring Your Own Mat) but then saw a stack of extras in the corner of the room. After grabbing a mat, I picked an open spot on the floor and sat down…then I stood back up and kicked off my socks and shoes when I realized that everyone else was barefoot. (Seriously, what is with yoga and Pilates being barefoot requisite? The only exercise I’m used to doing sans shoes is swimming.)

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…