Trying not to die

Before I even put the first morsel of holiday food to my mouth, I enlisted in a class in January called “Fat Burner”.  Not the prettiest of names, but hoping for truth in advertising, I signed myself up.  Lighting my fat on fire would have been less painful.

They should have called this class "Whip my ass and beat me".  I knew it was going to hurt.  I knew it was going to be a struggle to finish a one-hour class.  I smartly placed myself within 6 feet of the instructor figuring that if I was going to need her to perform CPR, I wanted to be within quick compression distance.  Funny, how this kind of thing never even crosses your mind until you reach the depth of middle age.

It began innocently enough with a warm-up.  When the cardio began in earnest, things started getting ugly fast.  At the half way mark of the class, I was in trouble.  My legs were like a bowl of burning jelly, my heart was pounding and I felt like throwing up.  The bottom of my feet even hurt due to an unfortunate shoe choice. Happy New Year to me.

When I looked up to see if anyone else was having a near death experience, I discovered to my horror that there were about 3 others who appeared to be in even worse shape; beet red faces and looking as though their eyes were going to roll back into their heads.  Funny, that's never the look you see on the commercials in January with all those fit, smiling women wearing beautiful outfits.    

I could tell that the instructor was doing some quick math in her head and surmised that administering CPR to 4 ladies simultaneously was going to result in tragedy.  So she suddenly spoke in earnest about staying at level 1 (the easiest) vs. level 2 or 3.  

Getting no argument from me, I committed fully to staying at level 1, if for no other reason than to finish the hour upright.  I even did burpies, ever so slowly at level one.  Remember burpies?  Another unfortunate name.  What…fartercize was already taken? 

I somehow survived the hour of endless lunges, squats and whatever the hell I was doing on that step.  I didn't dare look at myself in the mirror, not only to avoid the horror of what I might look like right before I expired, but with my middle aged tri-focal lenses, anything less than full concentration on the whereabouts of my feet might have resulted in an unexpected trip to the hospital.

I imagined a life the next day that didn’t include walking and wondered whether wheelchair service might be available for some low, low price.

As the class was finishing, the instructor suggested that we all do some kind of cardio again before the next class.  We clearly needed a class to get ready for class.  Happily, I’m scheduled to scale a mountain on snowshoes before the week’s end.  Another item checked off the old “to do “ list.   Let’s just hope some fat gets burned before this is all over.  I want to look good at my funeral.