Tears of Lactic Acid

My quads are crying tears of lactic acid, my friends. It’s not pretty but it’s very real.

I haven’t talked about it much on the blog but I’ve been quietly working out, with ever-increasing intensity and duration since mid-January. When I had my nose surgery in December, I learned that my blood pressure was high. While they initially thought it was only because I was so nervous about going under (it was the first time I’d ever been put completely out), that turned out not to be the case.

High blood pressure runs in my family. In fact, we all have it and I was actually on medication for it right after Taylor was born (crazy part was it was perfect the entire time I was pregnant – guess my body didn’t transition well) but it regulated after a couple of months.

However, I decided it was a good wake-up call because: 

1) I’m kind of too young to be on that stuff if I can manage to get off with diet and exercise 

2) we’re going to Disney next month and I must wear shorts IN FRONT OF OTHER PEOPLE since it’ll be 90+ degrees 

3) it wouldn’t hurt me to lose a few pounds, if you know what I mean.

I’ve made pretty good progress. I work out at least five times each week, rarely eat anything fried, amped up the veggie and water intake, have lost several inches and just feel better about life in general. Apparently this motivated my man to begin working out again as well because last week he approached me about joining the loca

l YMCA.

And by ‘approached,’ he told me he was doing it with or without me so did I want to come along for the ride or not?

A recent 'before' picture. I'm not brave enough to post 'after.'

Of course, I said 'yes' because I’m feeling quite good about exercising these days and would like to ramp up the intensity even more. We signed up last Thursday but weren’t able to go over the weekend because of Mother’s Day festivities. So I went Tuesday (Tay has gym on Mondays so we hike) after work.

After dropping Tay off in the computer lab, I changed and headed straight into the Spinning class. Here, at Baylor, they have cycling classes over in the SLC that allow you to work at your own pace and I would love to attend but they don’t offer child care (imagine that!) so I was excited about this opportunity. Really excited.

Until I walked in and the class was so hardcore that there weren’t even seats on the bikes. No seats, my friends, because they wanted you to STAND UP THE ENTIRE TIME!!!!!!

I stood there approximately 30 seconds before retrieving my water bottle and heading toward the other aerobics room where a Body Shaping class was set to begin.

While I should have known that it was going to be intense when I saw a man leading the class and everyone was setting up their station with 10 different pieces of toning equipment (body bar, band, resistance band, weights, mat, step, etc.), I must confess that I embarked upon the adventure anyway.

Merciful heavens, y’all, it was ROUGH!

But I only cried twice. And I only thought I was going to lose my late afternoon Fiber One snack once.

I’m calling that victory.

Praise His holy name that Taylor had gym again last night, though, because the class in that time slot on Wednesdays is Turbo Kickboxing.

I’m relatively certain my quads – did I mention they’ve been crying lactic acid teardrops for TWO days – would not make it through an hour of that type of exercise. They managed to hold up through my 4-mile Walking Away the Pounds DVD but only with non-stop prayer, my friends.

Did I mention that we did at least 120 lunges and/or squats throughout the class? Or that we then put these elastic bands around our ankles and side stepped from wall to wall? And then were supposed to do it again?

Then the precious instructor said, ‘Now let’s actually get started.’

WHAT?!?!?!

So why am I planning to go back tonight?

Because I’m either insane or competitive and need to prove that I can hang.

You be the judge.

In the meantime, I’ll be icing my multiple sore parts with Blue Bell…