Dear Fellow YMCA Members:<\/p>\n
Today marks the first day of my reign as champion of the Y. See, last month when I signed up for Fitlinxx<\/a> and started tracking my progress and viewing my statistics on a compulsively regular basis, I jumped in halfway into October, so some of you managed to get in just that much more fitness than me. In my group (females, 30-39, at my Y), I ended up #7 out of #77. This month, I will win.<\/p>\nI started today with half an hour on the cross-trainer (499 calories burned; I reeeeeeeally wanted to push past the time limit just for that one extra point, but there was an old sweaty guy lurking around behind me, lusting over my machine). Then I lifted. 7,200 lbs. I don’t know how many VW Beetles that is, because the site hasn’t been updated yet, but I’ll be sure to let you know.<\/p>\n Then I went to Body Flow<\/i>. This was the first chance I’ve had to take a class there, so I was psyched. Two hippie girls, two Edina moms and me got all loosened up to an interesting combination of tai chi, yoga, and pilates. I like the yoga, but I think I’ll probably never be a yogi, due to this stupid hip and my appallingly-poor balance, not to mention the fact that I have no patience. But, dude, I can do downward dog with the best of them. I liked the core work the best, though, and the exercises that turned one girl into a cramped-up fetal ball were no problem for me. Who knew those eight trillion crunches would actually do some good?<\/p>\nThe studio where the class is held is lined with mirrors, except for two cutouts where there are windows. You don’t really notice the windows because they have no frames around them, so you’ll just be looking around, and all of a sudden see yourself as this fat old guy or little kid running through the parking lot, and have to assure yourself that that was not actually a psychotic episode. Anyway, I wasn’t so down with having to watch myself in the mirror, but I realized it was a good thing. All this time, I’ve been thinking I look like the kid that got dropped off by the short bus especially to attend this class. It’s good to have evidence to the contrary. I sometimes even manage to look like I know what I’m doing amidst all the proud warriors, sun salutations, bicycles, and planks.<\/p>\nThe best, the very very best part, though, was realizing I could actually pay attention to what my body was telling me when it was unhappy at certain moments. I’ve been getting little cramps in my calves on the elliptical machine, and I now know that it’s because I’m not drinking enough water. So I did that today, and they didn’t bother me so much. The cramp in my abs (as I was leaving the bathroom, shut up) was less pleasant. I didn’t even know those muscles could cramp until recently. They can, and it involves a whole lot of laying on your back, trying to keep from punching yourself in the stomach to get them to go away. It’s nice.<\/p>\nI know I’m going to kill myself winning, but some things just have to be done.<\/p>\nJenni<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dear Fellow YMCA Members: Today marks the first day of my reign as champion of the Y. See, last month when I signed up for Fitlinxx and started tracking my progress and viewing my statistics on a compulsively regular basis, I jumped in halfway into October, so some of you managed to get in just …read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/po9qt-b7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}