I joined a gym the day after my 50th birthday. At this age, I know my character flaws intimately so I attend group classes in strength training. Left to my own, I'd skip through a set of biceps and triceps and perform four half-hearted lunges and call it a day. My one hour Power Pump class keeps me honest plus the comraderie of pained expressions is a welcome bonus. I am bothered, however, by the conspicuous lack of cursing in that class. I seem to be the only person in there letting expletives fly like a jaunty Teamster. Not that anyone can hear me above the mandatory dance-infected, hip-hop mottled, techno-chunked soundtrack obviously designed to drown out the desperate cries of those bearing down on their one millionth lunge.
I'm quite fond of the Saturday morning step class. It is led by a powerfully built ebony god of an instructor with loads of personality, energy and the ability to cue and spin his funky self at the same time. After fifteen minutes, my arm pit stains are down to my waist. After 35 minutes, I'm soaked with sweat and start to halluncinate which would account for those around me sprouting scales and unicorn horns. After 50 minutes my heart shoots out of my chest like a cannon (thank you Herman Melville) and up ahead, I see a bright white light. It's about this time that the cool down starts and by the time we're stretching, I'm just a babbling puddle of middle-aged flesh tonguing the last drops of water from an empty bottle of Evian. Trust me, it's my most graceful moment.
Now all of that hour may not seem like a victory to you, but my triumph is just keeping up, because when you're fifty, that's enough.
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3 comments:
A double post! Welcome back, Cora. The nagging clearly worked. We should've done it sooner.
As to the sweat, a little schvitzing never hurt anyone.
There is something gratifying about self-inflicted agony. And we pay for this privilege? Go figure. Your fitness enthisiasm is paying off, if I may say so. You look mahvelous and since it is better to LOOK good than to FEEL good, you've got all those priorities straight.
Thanks for the blog, baby.
tripceps?
I've been so obsessed with this new thing in my life that I almost missed two posts. I mean, this one was posted just one hour after I gave birth; I could've read it!
Anyway, it had me giggling and chuckling like reading one of LJ's posts--which is compliment, of course. I was giggling so much that I almost made the baby sleeping on my chest wake up--and you have no idea how long it took us to get this far. Appreciate the caps--Judabear got all lowercase comments tonight. I love your writing and I hope you'll keep sharing.
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