The Adventure Begins ...

The first of our 36 fun-filled training sessions was on Monday, March 22nd! I didn't have a big enough duffle bag for all the treasures I thought I might need to have with me, so I borrowed a bag small enough to hold a team's worth of soccer balls and took with me:

• lock (for the locker room)
• 3 bottles water and 3 granola bars
• extra shoes (2 pairs) and extra socks
• swim suit - darn that Land's End, I was really hoping to find the swim suit purchased in 2003 that hadn't seen the light of day since oh, 2007, had succumbed to dry rot but no such luck!
• oversize towel
• flip flops
• shower cap x 2
• goggles x 2
• long sleeve t-shirt
• short sleeve t-shirt
• hooded sweatshirt
• shorts

The bag almost weighed more than me but I grunted it out to the car and then, when we met at 3:30 p.m. in the designated parking lot, oomphed it into the vehicle we were taking that day - I was seriously counting that as part of the exercise, little did I know!

There are about 50-60 ladies in our training session - various ages, shapes, sizes, and levels of fitness. We met the instructors (way too energetic for end of the day!), filled out some papers, and had a brief introduction to the 12 week program.

For the first session we were in a gym where about 25-30 'stations' had been set up - the idea was we would do each 'station' for 2 minutes and at the signal, move on to the next station. I remembered how to jump rope, and eventually figured out how to get my feet into the 'baskets' on the stationery bikes, had fun with 'boxing kicks' (and did not hurt myself or anyone else - a big plus!), but was seriously looking at my water bottle across the room by about half-way around!

To be fair, I must say staff members were plentiful to make sure we were doing things correctly - loved the one where you sat on the exercise ball, 'walked' forward until your shoulder blades were the only thing on the ball, and then lifted small hand weights - took me several tries to get into the proper position and by then it was time to move on!

When we were released from the circuit from you-know-where and sprawled (not very ladylike either) with our water and sweat towels, we received additional information from the staff - helpful and uplifting things like:

• This is not the time to start a diet as we'll need the extra calories since we're going to burn off so many calories with our workouts - I was real good with that until she went on to say this isn't the time to supersize our meals on the way home either - the middle ground seemed to be eating healthier rather than just eating more!
• This is also not the time to count on losing weight either - apparently they have good scientific evidence that muscle weighs more than fat - now in what parallel universe is that ok! The 'good' news is that we will lose inches as we become 'toned' - although the consensus from the ladies who have done this before is that the inches are going to come of our ear lobes and other areas above the waist!

So on that cheerful note we were released for the night with the promise of a 'more thorough' workout on Wednesday!