Shine My Way

My body would like to know what, exactly, I think I’m doing awake again. At 3am. On Spring Break.

But I went to Muscular White Gut’s class at PlayFITStayFIT yesterday, and afterwards Dorothy-ish asked me if his class was harder than Tiny Brazilian’s.

(A quick sidenote on nicknames. I’m horrible at coming up with them. So, typos are fair game…)

I couldn’t give her an answer.

I’m just not sure.

As I was trying to will my arms to do the assigned lateral raises in class yesterday, Muscular White Gut yelled, “you’ve gotten stronger since Tuesday!”

You don’t know what I’ve done since Tuesday. Psht. I’ve eaten two bags of potato chips, a box of cookies, and three beers since Tuesday.

What.

Try to motivate me with positive thinking, dammit…

While everyone else got to give the climbing rope a gentle hug, I had to try to actually climb it. Because at some point in the three days Muscular White Gut has known me, I said the word Spartan.

He showed me the technique that people have been trying to explain to me for the last two years.

I managed to keep myself off the ground for more than 5 seconds and may have even made some progress up. Small progress. Like, maybe a quarter of a centimeter. But I’m fairly confident that if I hadn’t completely fatigued my arms before that point, I might have actually climbed a bit. I won’t give him credit for that just yet, though. Let me not have to do 300 burpees my next Spartan and then I might thank him.

Nearly actually crushed my skull during skull crushers because Muscular White Gut handed me a heavier weight and then my thumbs kept cramping up.

My thumbs.

From Muscular White Gut’s insistence that I continually change my grip during the bar hang right before. Because, again, that word. Spartan.

After class, when my arms were good and useless, Dorothy-ish suggested we head to Starr Hill Pub Run to walk and cuddle puppies.

So, you know how if you’ve been slacking on your fitness a bit and you go out and push a run really hard, you get side stitches? Then you have to kind of stretch your arms over your head to make the shooting pain stop?

Right.

So, that’s what happened to me. Only I wasn’t pushing it real hard on a run. I was walking. Walking. I got side stitches on a walk. And not even a brisk walk. Just a normal walk.

And then I had to not only live with the shame of that, but I also had to just live with the shooting pain. Because I couldn’t lift my arms over my head to stretch it out. Because Muscular White Gut.

I tried to stretch it with a little twisty back bendy move, but Dorothy-ish said it looked too sexy and I should stop lest I tempt the multitude of fishermen willing to consume fish out of the Roanoke River that were lining the Greenway along our walk. (It’s cool. Dude has checked the toxicity levels of the water. They’re within acceptable limits…)

So, I definitely put my body through some work.

But really, how much of that was Muscular White Gut’s workout and how much was delayed onset muscle soreness from Tiny Brazilian’s workout?

So fine.

I pulled my rickety behind out of bed at 3am to once again take on the Tiny Brazilian this morning.

I need to be able to answer this question.

But after another intense morning class, here’s all I learned.

K-Rob-D is the problem child. She got in trouble for arguing with Tiny Brazilian. I’m pretty sure she’s gonna have to run laps later.

Skratch assumed GJB’s normal position as only dude at the Women’s Conference with poise. (That’s not easy around this group of broads. Not sure why Endong and DICtator keep ditching us. We’re delightful.)

Beautiful Beasty is way too fit for her own good. And if she weren’t so badass, she might’ve caught a beat down after class for setting the bar too high for the rest of us. Dancing on the box jumps? I’ll dance up and down yo ass if you don’t calm the hell down.

And things get a little unsettling when Rogue becomes the voice of reason suggesting that we didn’t need to do tornado mountain runs two weekends in a row. Huh. Ok. Yeah. That makes sense.

So we skipped North Mountain. Again.

And I don’t think anyone was even a little disappointed about that.

But I still don’t know whose class is harder. I’m gonna need more experience to judge.

Sadly, SOL testing season kicks into high gear next week, and I’ll need my arms and legs to manage testing. So it may be a week or two before I can go back.

That may just give my muscles time to atrophy a bit so they feel normal again.

Because right now, I feel like I’m carrying around two big boulders for glutes and I no longer have any range of motion in my arms.

I’m basically Korg, except without the badass look and loveable nature.

Also, don’t tell Beautiful Beasty what I said about dancing on her. Apparently I’m taking her Body Pump class at Carilion Westlake tomorrow? And she scares me even when she’s not throwing weights at me and yelling out instructions.