yikes

yesterday i had one of those hard reality moments that hits you every once in awhile.

in a surprise move to everyone, including myself, i decided to go work out.

see, i've known i NEED to work out for awhile now. in a moment of absolute insanity 6 years ago, i quit my job and quit running in the very same week. the last time i went on a real, serious run was november of 2001. i was actually in dallas, tx, visiting friends at the time. nothing was too memorable about the run, except that i saw a dead armadillo on the road i was on.

okay, i digress. back to yesterday. our church is having some 10 week fitness challenge that sounded EASY in the bulletin. i skipped going on monday (i work, what do you think, that i have free time during the day?!) and then my 60 year old friend called me on tuesday and said it was a good workout. so, i figured i might as well try it too. that's me, not wanting to be outdone by a lady who could be my mom (she's the one who got me to jump off that cliff in the black hills this summer also). but it's not too much pressure to go work out with a bunch of 60 year olds (including my PASTOR), right?

ohforcryingoutloud. OFCOL for short. my BUTT was kicked! there are 60 year olds (quite a few of them, actually) in MUCH better shape than me! at one point, i thought i would vomit. there were 16 "stations" set up around the gym of the school attached to the church, weight stations alternating with aerobic stations. SIXTEEN stations. and bonnie, the pastor's daughter, who is a certified personal trainer and i THOUGHT a very nice woman, was our coach. she sweetly said that we were going to move from station to station, and do the activity until she blew the whistle. by the time i got around to nearing the end of those 16 stations is when the overwhelming feeling of DYING came over me.

i'd like to say it phased bonnie, and that she had mercy on me and let me quit. but she told me to walk twice around the gym to get my breath back, and then we had to do ANOTHER SET, only for half as long. the torturous hour ended with all of us on these little yoga mats, bending in ways my body has never bent. even THAT was miserable.

doh. wish me luck, i signed up for 9 more weeks of this, and i am hoping it takes a long long time to get to next monday.