I'm definitely one of those people who finds a theme to talk about and sticks to it...
To say I ache at the moment would be grossly underplaying the pain occurring all over my body. Not to mention, there is a muscle in the back of my thigh that spasms every 30 seconds and the feeling is quite bizarre. My reason for all this pain? I am still doing the whole exercise thing.
Yup, ladies and gents, I have attended the gym for a total of 5 solid days in a row, with a small break yesterday where I nursed a hangover from a particularly dance orientated night in central London.
On Friday night, I attended a Legs, Tums and Bums class, thinking that it sounded like a fun and peppy title, so therefore the class would also be fun and peppy. However, five minutes into this class, I realised that not only was I drastically mistaken about the type of class I was attending, but in actual fact, this class might actually have been created by the devil himself.
Don't ask me how I did it, but I did manage to get through the entire class without dragging my pained body out the door. Sure, there were times when the rest of the class went ahead and squatted without me, whilst I pretended that my hair had fallen out of my clip once again, and so needed fixing, but I inevitably joined back in again, despite my body's many, many protests. Also, the instructor for this class was from the 'tough love' category when it came to her style of teaching. If you started to give up, she would scream at you about not falling behind, calling you out from the front of the class and saying over and over "if it's burning, that means it's working! Don't stop now!" It got even worse than that, if you stopped for a particularly long time then she would come and find you. Any time she came anywhere near to where I was, I found myself pulling some hidden adrenaline out from arse and using it just to make her turn around and not shame me in front of the rest of the class, I'm thankful to say that it worked... which was probably her plan all along.
I attended this class alone, but about halfway through, when I had well and truly changed colour to a shining red all over my body, and was, shall we say 'glistening' from head to toe, a girl in her 20s, no bigger than a size 10 came sauntering over to me in between exercises. I was, at the time, gulping down a gallon of water and trying to stop myself from falling into uncontrollable tears. I remember seeing her and thinking she was so lucky, she was completely pale faced, barely a bead of sweat on her and she seemed completely at ease. I knew I looked ridiculous next to her, which was confirmed when I glanced in the wall mirror in front of us. As such, I was torn between ignoring the hell out of her so that my envy wouldn't grow any more, and wanting to reach out to her and make conversation to A: find out her magical secret, and B: have a friend in this class. I decided to go for somewhere in the middle, and I offered her a friendly smile. She returned this smile with a pained one of her own and groaned.
"This has got to be the hardest thing I've ever done." She said. "I'm completely out of breath and don't know if I can do it for much longer!"
I rolled my eyes and muttered something like "Tell me about it", all the while thinking to myself that if this is what she looks like when she's completely knackered, then I don't even want to think about how intimidating she looks when she's not "completely out of breath." I caught myself comparing our looks once more in the mirror, my entire body had turned a shade of deep red and there were 'glistening' patches all over my top. My hair was matted to neck and my much bigger body type looked awkward and unstable next to hers. I resisted the urge to punch her in the face for being so naturally pristine in the face of exercise, realising that it probably wasn't her fault, if anything it was my fault for being so unfit to begin with. Before we could continue with any further conversation however, the screaming teacher pulled us back into another exercise routine and a further part of me died inside. However Perfect-Girl, as I'm now calling her, decided that exercising next to me for the rest of the class was a good idea, so I had that comparison to look at all the way through. One day, when exercise isn't so foreign to me, I might be able to get through one of those lessons without coming out looking like I'd spent 15 hours sunbathing with no lotion, and then I can intimidate everyone else with my relaxed face and normal skin tone... that's the dream...
Saturday, I went to an Abs attack class in the morning with One-And-Only-Daniela. Although this class wasn't nearly as strenuous, and was completely based on our backs, lying on the floor, there was something about it that I found even harder. One-And-Only-Daniela, on the other hand, being a gal obsessed with toning her abs, sailed through the class, whilst I usually got through about three of each exercise before collapsing spread eagled onto the floor and asking myself why the hell I was putting my body through this... then I thought of the bridesmaid dress, and a new push ran through me, forcing me back into the stretch the rest of the class was doing... at least for a couple of seconds before I remembered why I had stopped in the first place and collapsed once more.
Being the hardcore exercisers that we are (at least that we've been this week), One-And-Only-Daniela and I came back to the gym later that day and spent a whopping 2 1/2 hours doing cardio. This, I liked. I saw an instructor who briefly showed me around and booked me in for a proper programme (happening tomorrow), then told me that I should be doing cardio for an hour and a half, at least four days a week, in order to reach my target. However, after that, he left me to get on with it and that I did. One-And-Only-Daniela and I then spent the next few hours doing some hardcore cardio and, now that no one was yelling at me or looking over my shoulder, and there was a TV built into the machines so I was able to watch Big Bang Theory whilst exercising, I was able to do it all easily. (Side note: I also watched some show about a bunch of American girls all competing to marry Prince Harry, only it wasn't actually Prince Harry because Prince Harry would never do a show like that, instead it was a look alike, only none of them knew that and all thought they would end up as princesses. It was the most bizarre and riveting TV I've ever watched. I'm going to find that show properly and watch the hell out of it, then you can be sure that I will talk about it here. I mean, seriously? There's so much A: wrong and B: amazing about the whole concept.)
To end everything off, One-And-Only-Daniela has gone and got herself a gym membership at my gym, which is amazing as she lives on the other side of London and it's such a trek for her. But, as we both need other people to spur us on when a new trend of ours starts to fade away, we realised the necessity of being each other's wingmen in the gym. She's meeting me after work today and we're going for a session. Which is excellent as, considering the way my body feels right now, I would have totally chickened out and gone home instead... you watch people, I will become an exercise God... and that bridesmaid dress will fit me so perfectly, people will write songs about it.
Peace out my lovelies.
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