Here Comes the Hot Stepper

Plan

• Body Jam @ 7:30pm
  

Actual

• RPM with Mid @ 5:20pm
  
  • 45mins
    
• Body Step with George @ 6:10ish
  
  • 5mins
    
• Body Combat with Olly @ 6:30pm
  
  • 60mins
    
• Body Jam with Carla and Annie
  
  • 60mins
    

I fought very hard to not email Mid during the day to announce my return to RPM, because to be honest, I wasn't sure whether I was going to do it or not - as indicated by the plan, where I only accounted for Body Jam. I made the booking in the morning and decided to go for it. I had all my gear, so what did I have to lose. It has been AGES since my last class, and it is probably a better solution to ease back in with Mid's class than jumping straight back into an RPM Enduro class with Jaci.

It was an interesting class - I could feel how much the pace and strength in my legs has dropped, so it was a much harder class than my previous classes with Mid. I took almost every recovery opportunity I could, whereas in the past I was able to maintain load and drop off pace to recover. The good thing is, it didn't hurt in the hill climbs when I stood up - I felt a little bit of squishedness in the toes in my left foot, but no pain. Which is great. Hmmm, I wonder if there's some swelling that still hasn't gone down? Might pay for me to ice it down a bit later.

Believe it or not, Mid *didn't* pick Paradise City for track 5. She didn't have to, it was still a hard class for me, but it was like coming home. I wasn't even sitting in my beloved New Lynn bike, so that made it all the more pleasing.

After I finished RPM, I changed out of my padded shorts and into my cropped Nike pants, but I kept my new sleeveless cycling top on. I bought it from the MoreFM TriWoman online shop, but I also purchased two pairs of cycling shorts from them, which I never received since they didn't take the item down off the website and let people continue to purchase them. It's a shame, since the cycling top is lovely, and I'm sure the shorts would've been great too. Never mind. I've given up chasing them for my money back. I've tried numerous times to contact them but I don't get any response - not even a read receipt on my emails.

But enough of that!

I headed on upstairs to Studio 2 where Body Step with George was going on, and I saw Fred set up in the middle of the room. Thinking of the hilarity of the double team Stepping we did last time I thought "hmmmm... do I dare?"

I muscled my way into the class next to him, and straight away, he gestured the Step for me to join in with him. It was too funny and George, again, had trouble keeping a straight face and found it hard to cue. She didn't laugh at us, but she did say, "You guys are CRAZY!" Judes, I saw you there, no doubt you would've seen Fred and I being absolute fools during Footloose, yes? :-D Right pair of Hot Steppers we were. (Ahahahah, it was too perfect, FLG, I HAD to use that title :-D)

Given that my legs were a bit knackered, I sat down for the rest of the class. I had a protein bar and quickly began munching on it, wanting to get it down before Combat started (hey, I was there, I figure, I might as well) George, from the stage, saw me sitting at the back of the room gobbling, and she even did a wee impersonation. Argh! I'd just done RPM and was about to do two more hours of cardio, come ON! I'm not a pig, honest! (Well, I *AM*, but I wasn't at that moment, I was being sensible!)

There were a group of people dressed in hilarious clothing - one girl dressed up as a Ghostbuster, one guy completely in drag, a couple as hip hop moguls and some crazy 1980s aerobics instructors who came in to do Body Combat; I must say, it made the class QUITE entertaining.

Olly had BC39 queued up to start, but the first track started to skip, so he switched to a completely different warmup altogether. I'm rather impressed that he was able to do that so easily - I know it's something that any good instructor should be able to do, but it's much harder than it sounds.

The class was good mix of old and new, and I high impactified SOME of the moves. Mainly the ones on my right leg. The physio said I can start slowly introducing some high impact stuff back itno my workout to get the confidence back into the foot, BUT, I have to be careful not to do too much too fast.

We went back to BC39 for a few tracks, in particular, we did Johnny B Goode, and there's a famous bloke at the gym in the front row of nearly all of the classes named John, so Olly, of course, called him up onstage, and everyone in the class was screaming 'Go Johnny Go Go Go!' unprompted because it was SO awesome seeing him up there.

For the final power track, Olly invited all of those who had dressed up to come onstage. It was a real hoot seeing them all up there, some of them like rabbits in the headlights, and also thrown by reverse cueing. It was quite a sight to behold.

I didn't do the conditioning track, opting to take the time to change t-shirt. It was a good idea to take a break because for some reason, I started to get a bit of cramp in my left calf. Hmmm... a bit worrying, but nothing too serious, I should think.

It was great to be doing Jam with Annie and Carla, but by then, I must say, I was pretty knackered. Imagine how tired I would've been if I hadn't gobbled down that bar!

We did the warmup and isolations from BJ47, the latin from BJ47, the latin from BJ37, then old skool hip hop from BJ47. Gosh it's been a while since I've done that block, and it's still awesome! My ankle, however, was NOT happy in the latin block at all, so I took it down a notch in the other tracks. From there, we did the rest of BJ48 - from the recovery to UF "Oh" right to the groovedown.

Carla taught Jam+, but given how lazy my legs were after being thrashed about, I went with the Jam. Ain't no shame in it. I'm a hardcore Jammer and I did the Jam version on my own, even with the class around me doing Jam+.

It felt great to let out all of my frustrations and whatnot with such a solid day of exercise. Tomorrow it's just a session with Adam and then kicking back to watch India kick New Zealand's ass (*sob*) at the cricket.