Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Class #90 Sculpt Monday 7:15 p.m. (Beth)

I only have twenty classes left on the quest and two of them are the late starting Sculpt classes on Monday/Wednesday. Actually, the 7:15 start time doesn’t sound too bad but ending at 8:15 and getting home at 8:45 seems late especially since I’ll be eating dinner afterwards. I wonder if the regulars who come to this class eat before they come. I also wonder if many people will come to a class starting after 7:00 p.m.

As I walk up to the room about 7:12 I get a resounding answer to my previous question. The room is so full of women that now what I wonder is if there’s any room for me in there. I’m guessing there are about 25 folks in class and every one of them is female. As I walk in I wonder aloud why there aren’t any men here but this query only elicits some nervous laughter. “Don’t tell me there’s dancing in this class?”

A few of the women sidle up to me and say - “Beth’s the greatest, you’re going to love her but this class is kinda hard”. I’ve taken one of Beth’s classes already and it was indeed challenging so I expect nothing less than that tonight.

Sure enough, at 7:15 on the dot, the aerobics music starts up its relentless double time beat and we’re on the move. Beth will keep the throttle opened wide until 8:10 when we mercifully begin the five-minute stretch and cool down phase.

In between we do countless squats, lunges, plies, hamstring curls, leg lifts, chest presses, flys, shoulder raises, bicep curls, tricep extensions and on and on. Our arsenal is two sets of hand weights, a heavy bar, a mat and a step with four risers. We use everything but the lighter hand weights multiple times. At the end of each set I’m thinking about how nice it’ll be when this set ends cause surely the next set will be easier. Easier never happens.

Beth Cirwinski (she looks so harmless....)

One of the last things we do is a seemingly never ending sequence of forearm planks, side planks, straight arm planks, one-legged planks and so ever on. We hold some version of plank for about seven minutes without rest. At least I think it was seven minutes. It could have been three but it felt like twenty. At some point, LONG after I thought we would be resting and near utter despair, I touch my knees to the ground for about five seconds before soldiering on. Oh the shame.

At some point in class it occurs to me that these twenty-five women probably didn’t all show up tonight for the first time. That means they’ve done this BEFORE and KEEP COMING BACK! This is why, I now understand, God chose women to bear children instead of us wimpy men. If men were having babies each family would have exactly one child.

The scary part is that I still have to do the Sculpt class on Wednesday night at 7:15 along with Beth’s Tuesday morning Sculpt class. Woe is me.

The winner of the $25 gift certificate is Clare Buckman.

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