14 Days of Peloton: Day 6

I have decided that because I hate the pilates class so much, I will take it before my workouts to motivate me to be better at things. After all, it is only ten minutes long. How bad can that be?

I realize that categorizing things in time limits is not always helpful. Getting waterboarded for ten minutes is probably terrible. Better than twenty minutes, for sure, but also much worse than zero minutes. I am nearly a week into doing these workouts and I realize that my inner thighs hurt and walking is difficult.

But on the plus side, my shoulder pain which is pretty much omnipresent hasn't been bothering me at all, and I attribute this to actually using my arms for things! Even if it's not using the weights, which I don't do in any of the classes, because it seems impossible and I am certain Hannah's weights are not weights at all but props, because no human can physically lift five pounds in the fashion she recommends for any extended period of time.

I have also started to rank the classes in order of which ones are better to take on which days, the days being categorized as:

1. I Don't Want To Do This But I Should

2. I Really Don't Want To Do This But I Am In A Hell Of My Own Making

3. I Hate Everything About This And I Hope I Die Before The TV Boots Up

I think that perhaps today is the day I miss another class, but we have exactly 25 minutes before I need to get ready for dinner, which means I have exactly enough time for a 10 minute Pilates class and a 15 minute barre class.

I categorize my experience as #3 but the TV boots up and I do the workouts, and then I proceed to drink two martinis at dinner, continuing my journey as a paragon of health.

14 Days of Peloton: Day 4 (because I missed one)

Two days in and I've already failed my own challenge. There is absolutely no good reason for it. I had all day to do it. I just kept saying, "I'll do it later," and then later was 5pm, I was hungry, and wanted tacos. I knew once I ate them, there was no going back. 

I eat the tacos, and the tacos are delicious. I rationalize that I will just do extra stuff tomorrow. I drink a second margarita while telling myself I am practicing self-care by letting my body rest. After a third margarita, I am certain I am a health whisperer, and my body will get itself in shape if I just let it take its natural course.

In the cold light of morning, my lies are revealed to me (except the part about the tacos, which were delicious). I have posed myself a challenge because letting my body take its natural course means it will consume donuts ONLY and I want it to consume donuts SOMETIMES and also have muscles that will carry my skeleton around.

I decide to do two classes to make up for my error, but I do not want to do two barre classes back to back. Hannah has told me that her Intro to Pilates class is a good way to open the hips or wake up the lungs or deliver eggs to the glutes, I am not sure, I was not listening. But I did hear the words 'Intro to Pilates,' so I fire up the video.

One minute in, and I like it. Hip rolls! I need these. My hips always hurt.

Three minutes in, and I don't like it. Everything hurts. Why do I have to move my legs? Why are there seven more minutes?

Five minutes in, Hannah keeps telling me to keep a space between my waist and the floor. I do not think she realizes that I am here because there IS no space between my waist and the floor. Only donuts.

Seven minutes in, I hope I die.

Intro to Pilates ends and Hannah says I can take her other pilates class which are harder, and I am sure this is some sort of joke, because no one can do more than what I have just done in ten minutes.

Except I have to, because I said I would do an extra class today. My butt hurts and I have a headache because I am hungry and haven't eaten enough lunch (my stint as a health guru was clearly fleeting), but I have said I would Do The Thing, so the thing must be done.

I take a 20 minute barre class and I have chosen wisely, because the thing has me ROLLING with laughter. Dammit, Hannah, I am trying to hate you for hurting my butt with pilates and you are not making it easy!

I want to write more about my time with this class, because it was excellent, but I am also dying, and so I pat myself on the back for a job well done, but it is a metaphorical pat, because my arms don't work anymore.

14 Days of Peloton: Day 2

 I have the notion that I must do class today, but when or where is yet to be determined. After a series of truly horrendous errands that involved GOING PLACES and DOING THINGS, I am considering not doing a barre workout. My second Corona whispers to me, "Doing things is for chumps, and you are a champion."

I am inclined to listen to my beer, but then Hannah texts me and says she has a live barre class happening in twenty minutes. She is much more persuasive than my beer, probably because in the hierarchy of things that are persuasive, boobs are above beer. I go to look for my workout shorts so that I may attend barre not in jean shorts.

WHERE ARE MY SHORTS AND WHY ARE THEY ALWAYS MISSING.

This will be the title of my memoirs, because I have only one singular pair of workout shorts. This has been true for many years now, and I have done little to rectify the situation. In fact, when I realized I needed another pair of workout shorts, I just stopped working out, as to prevent having to find more. But workouts are my life now, at least for two weeks, and therefore my workout shorts have a responsibility that they are CONSTANTLY SHIRKING by always being missing. 

I realize that they are not missing but merely placed safely in the drawer they should always be in. This is why I was confused, because I never put things away, and it is absurd that they would be somewhere they ought. I do not puzzle through this because I have found them and that makes me happy that at least some inanimate object is doing its job today (I'm looking at you, GPS that wouldn't take me to the right place earlier). 

Dan has recently returned from the dentist and declines my invitation to assault our bodies with isometric movements. I tell him that he will miss Hannah saying funny things and also wearing a sports bra, but he is oddly unswayed by boobs, and this is the curse of marrying a level-headed man. 

This is a 20 minute barre class, and that suits me fine, because I am an hour into happy hour and doing things has been a real study in continuous failure today. A few minutes in and I am thrilled that I am taking this class, because Hannah is funny and keeps saying 'squish your peach', which is such a delightful collection of words and sounds that I am giggling except my abs are dying so this is all very excellent/terrible. Then she refers to tucking your pelvis as 'moving your front magic' and I just fucking lose it, because that is the best way anyone has ever described a pelvic area. 

I will be referring to vaginas as front magic from now on. This also implies the presence of back magic, and strays close to implying that either you need to cast a spell to get in or it will cast a spell on your way out, and I am good with both.

I promise Hannah that I will take videos of me working out, which is a challenge, because I am not very coordinated in my workouts, and adding a camera to this is novel.

But nevertheless, I persisted. Day 2 done. Fitness update: still not ripped like Xena.

14 Days of Peloton Barre: Day 1

I have resolved to do fourteen days of Peloton barre, because I don't really do anything, and this seems like a good way to hang out with Hannah without her actually being there. 

The original plan was 14 days of fitness. After talking to Rama, I added 14 days of also doing whatever else I want, which includes eating donuts, because fitness should not be about getting skinny, it should be about luxuriating in my dumb body that rarely wants to do anything but eat donuts.

I feel good about this plan, and decide to execute. 

I think that I will do twenty minutes of barre, because that is a Good Workout, but I also want to go to the store to buy a particularly excellent pair of shoes I saw, and will not have enough time to do that if I do twenty minutes of barre. So I opt to do the ten minute Intro to Barre class. This is good because as I start the class, I remember that I had made a plan two weeks ago to do the classes in increasing difficulty, and then work backwards, back when I had thought I was going to start the program and then kept saying, "Maybe tomorrow," until the shame of disappointing myself became too much to bare and I finally said, "FINE I WILL DO IT."

Dan agrees to do barre with me and I am elated. He is a strong and capable athlete, but I am a solid small box of balance, and am thrilled to be better at something for once. I am very proud of my balance, because it was honed completely by accident and through boredom at a Courtyard Marriot front desk hotel job in Spokane where they did not have any internet, and I did not have a smart phone. I would try to sneak read, but my manager was strict, and wanted my eyes up in case an errant guest wandered across the lobby and became livid when no one looked at them. So instead, I would stand on one foot, and then the other, and then my toes, and eventually I had more balance than someone with a complete lack of coordination or athletic ability has a right to.

Dan and I enter our ten minutes of barre, thinking it will be a light workout. This is not the case, because Hannah is a slave driver in spandex and her graceful body full of functional muscles moves her effortlessly through the moves, and she is able to dance at the same time. She tells me to find the beat. I do not find the beat. I lift my legs up in complete un-rhythm. She is a fluid dancer, I am a Rock-Em Sock-Em Robot but doing barre.

Halfway through, my butt hurts. She tells me that this is just an intro and it is 'just a taste,' much in the way the first guy who got me stoned said, "This isn't even that much weed," as I wandered aimlessly in a field wondering if I would ever remember what feeling normal felt like again. I am fluttering my dumb legs filled with concrete and I am upset that there is a future in which I have to do this but for twice the amount of time.

The class ends and I lay back in child's pose with Dan. "If you breathe out of your butthole, it feels good," I tell him. He asks what that means, which I find absurd. Doesn't everyone know how to do this? "You know, like when you sit back, and then you breathe in, but you imagine your butthole is breathing out?" He stares at me, but ever the sport, he lays back in child's pose and tries it.

"It feels good, right?"

"I feel like I'm in prison," he says.

Day one, complete.