Class-y

I HEART classes.  Cardio classes, to be exact.  My very favorite and most successful class was a "Quad-Step" class.  I went every day  monday-saturday.  It was SO much fun.  I've done a variety of aerobic classes, tried The Firm videos, kick boxing, TaeBo, and most recently I gave "Zumba" a try.  I did Zumba at home using a DVD and I am SO glad.  It was fun.  It was REALLY fun.  BUT, I looked like a fool.  Zumba is basically fancy aerobic steps that you then add shaking your hips and flinging your arms about to.  With some very fun music and rhythm too.  It isn't boring.  I would love to do it again.  However, when you have hips like mine, MOMENTUM becomes a huge problem.  Swinging my hips vigorously from side to side really caused some balance issues.  The momentum of my hip shaking was a bit overpowering at times and I found myself staggering across a room while my feet tried to keep up with my hip action.  It was no a pretty sight.  So I probably won't be doing this one in a group setting anytime soon (for the safety of others).  But if you get a chance to give it a try, I would encourage you to do it.  Be prepared to shake, groove, and vibrate.  Keep a sense of humor about yourself and you'll have a great time.

On a more current events report, I was at the gym this morning at 6:45am to run.  Those of you who know me REALLY well are aware that I am NOT a morning person.  I like to stay up late and sleep in.  When I say "sleep in" I'm not talking about staying in bed until 10am, I just want to sleep uninterrupted until 8am....it's been SO long since I did this.  Even when I'm given the opportunity to sleep-in, my body is so accustomed to waking up to take care of my kids that my internal alarm clock doesn't let me sleep much past 7am.  But I would LOVE to give it a try and then be able to just lay there and not HAVE to get up.  However, since I'm a few years away from this, I might as well embrace the fact that I'm awake.  You can imagine my surprise when I discovered that I actually prefer to work out in the morning.  I like knowing that I'm done for the day and it is only 9am.  I feel SO productive.  It starts my day on a positive note.  Sure, I'm tired and I stumble to the bathroom to get dressed in the morning and longingly glance back at my sleeping husband in our snuggly bed and am tempted to just crawl back in, but I don't.   I go to the gym instead.  A couple minutes into my workout I am glad I'm there....I give myself a mental pat on the back.  Today I ran at a comfortable pace for about 25 minutes (this includes a 5 minute warm-up walk).  My comfortable pace is about 5 miles an hour...I can carry on a conversation at this pace and don't feel winded.  So it isn't my "ALL OUT" pace.  It's my leasurly jog pace.....a 12 minute mile.  I did 1.75 miles and then went in and did weights.  Arms today.  I'm already feeling it.  I'm exhausted.  I have no energy (my fault, I need to eat something).  So I'm going to go have a piece of whole wheat toast with natural peanut butter...yummy...I love melty creamy peanut butter.  And then I'm going to spend the rest of the morning packing up our basement.  We're moving.  Temporarily.  For 1 year.  Across the country.  Which brings me back to the beginning of this post.  I LOVE group exercise classes and I've already virtually scoped out several of the gyms in our soon to be new home town......I'm SOOOOO excited!  I have high hopes for my fitness routine and mixing things up.  For now, I'll run and do the gym stuff, but in a few months I'll be postin' about some pretty fun classes.  Now.....I'm off to make toast.  

Cheers!