Jazzercise #16: Successful Fire Drill and Off Like a Rocket — Pony Style!

Apparently, Jazzercise #16 started with a fire drill.

Not a real fire drill, of course. More of a Christy-created emergency preparedness exercise that I did not realize was an exercise until after I successfully completed it.

I woke up at 7 a.m. absolutely convinced I had an 8 a.m. Jazzercise class.

Oops.

I had set alarms for 6 and 6:30, but apparently I snoozed through those babies one after another without retaining any knowledge of the experience. Thankfully, I had laid out my clothes the night before, because suddenly I was moving.

And boy, did I move.

I had taken a shower before bed and gone to sleep with wet hair. Then Monkey slept on my head, adding several hours of feline engineering to the drying process. I ran a brush through my hair about six times that morning. It made absolutely no difference. My hair simply returned to whatever architectural design Monkey and my pillow had agreed upon overnight.

So I added a bandana and my traffic-cone earrings.

There. Now I didn’t look unkempt.

I looked intentionally crazy.

Perfect.

Then I stepped on a cat’s tail, so emergency feline peace negotiations had to take place before departure.

My tummy was doing tummy things, so I front-loaded with some Gatorade, raced to Starbucks, made a beeline for the bathroom, took care of that problem, and then emerged to collect my coffee.

Three baristas greeted me by name and seemed to do a slight double take.

I think it was the hair.

No time to worry about that. I was late!

I raced to Jazzercise and arrived at approximately 8:02.

SUCCESS!

I walked toward the classroom and immediately noticed my first clue that something was wrong.

That was not Robyn on the stage.

Instead, there was a skinny little teeny-tiny thing moving at approximately Mach 10.

Hmm.

Maybe Robyn was sick. I hoped she was okay.

I walked in and started scrolling through the class list, trying to find my name.

No Christy.

Then I looked a little closer.

POWER SCULPT HIIT 60.
Oh.

Oh, hell to the no.
I would not have signed up for HIIT.

Why would I sign up for HIIT?

That’s when I opened the app and discovered the funniest part of the entire situation:

I had not signed up for an 8 a.m. class at all.

I had invented an emergency, responded to the emergency, and successfully arrived almost on time for a class that existed but had absolutely nothing to do with me.

This was a drill. Only a drill.
And quite frankly, I think we performed beautifully.

I did fire drills in schools for years. You don’t get to know ahead of time whether the building is actually on fire. You respond appropriately and sort out the details later.

Response time: excellent.

Fortunately, there was a 9:15 Low Impact class coming up, so I immediately signed up for it and retreated to my car to calm the heck down, drink my coffee, listen to some oldies, and watch the HIIT people through the window like a wildlife documentary.

At one point, someone stopped exercising long enough to pick up a Red Bull, take a couple of drinks, put it back down, and return to exercising.

Apparently, she reverse-collected me.

She’s also the woman who listened to me complain about dumbbells because, as I pointed out, they literally have dumb in the name.

Her response?
Guys like women with nice arms.

Okay then.

I also explained that working out with dumbbells at home is more complicated because I have the ugly metal cranky kind—and sometimes I have a cat hanging off the dumbbell while I’m trying to move it.

She agreed that would be a problem.

I like her.

And I’ve realized that when she’s in class, my confidence goes up.

The instructor is showing me what to do, but my friend is simply so much fun to follow. She moves with this wonderful I’ve done this a bazillion times and I’m having the time of my life energy.

Joy is contagious.
Apparently, so is the Pony.

Fifty-Year-Old Me Is Better at This

Here’s something I never expected to say:
I think 50-year-old me might actually be better at Jazzercise than twenty-something-year-old me was.

Younger me had grown nine inches in three months between seventh and eighth grade and spent years trying to figure out where all my suddenly long limbs were.

Then I had two babies less than a year apart.

So when I did Jazzercise back then, I was still trying to figure out where my belly was, where my boobs were, where my center of gravity had gone, and how to get all of those things moving in the same direction at the same time.

I was also younger and probably much more worried about how I looked.

Fifty-year-old me?

I showed up today with Monkey- engineered hair, traffic-cone earrings, a bandana, a rebellious stomach, and absolutely no idea who was teaching the class.

Then I danced.
I went the wrong way occasionally.
I jumped a little.
I used the wrong dumbbells.
I Ponyed.
I sweated like an animal.
And I had a blast.

Now I think I finally understand why all those older ladies used to kick my ass at Jazzercise when I was younger.

They didn’t give a shit anymore.

They weren’t wasting energy worrying about whether they looked perfect.

They were just rolling with it.

Go, go, go.

And now?

I think I’ve become one of the old ladies.
And you know what?
I’m totally into it.

Jazzercise #16: Complete

My Fitbit called this supposedly Low Impact class a high-intensity session.

Nope.

The idea is to make my heart healthier, not make it explode.

You guys have fun.

I’ll be over here with my coffee.

I also carefully went through the Jazzercise app and fixed my schedule for the rest of July. Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday are now all at 9:15 a.m.

No confusion.
No fictional classes.
Hopefully.

And Then Jazzercise #16 Actually Happened

My instructor wasn’t Robyn.

It was Lauren.

And I knew Lauren!
She was one of my instructors back when I did Jazzercise years ago—the era of the Accidentally in Love routine.

She’s still going strong.
Lauren is tall and thin, and for some reason I found her really easy to follow.

Sometimes when Robyn folds herself in half and pops back up, I’m still trying to unfold all of me while she’s already three steps ahead.

There is a lot more of me to bring back to an upright position.

Lauren and I seemed to move at a similar enough pace that I could follow her really well—even though many of the routines and strength exercises were different from what I was used to.

And here’s the really cool part:
I kept up.
Different instructor.
Different choreography.
Different strength exercises.
And I was right there with her.

Sixteen classes in, and apparently my legs are finally starting to go in the direction the instructor tells them to go.

I’ve become reasonably fluent in cha-cha. I know that pliés are just squats wearing a fancy French name. I no longer turn into a deer in headlights when someone says pas de bourrée.

And I can remember some of the routines without the music even playing.

That’s progress.

Lauren does like jumping more than I do. I tried to pull it back a little because my Good Feet inserts are not enthusiastic supporters of the jumping lifestyle.

Unfortunately, jumping enthusiasm can be contagious.

So I may have jumped a little.
The rest of me enjoyed it.
My inserts have filed a complaint.

Then I accidentally grabbed the five-pound dumbbells instead of the three-pound dumbbells.
Oops.

But I made it through.
Apparently we’re doing five pounds now.
Or at least we did today.

The Mystery of the Go-Go Girl Has Been Solved
During Jazzercise #15, I talked about one of my Jazzercise friends—the really cool older lady who suddenly started dancing like she’d been one of the go-go girls back in the 1960s or ’70s.

She was so fluid and joyful that it looked like she lost 20 years off her age.

I couldn’t help watching her.
And I couldn’t help joining her.

Well, today Lauren gave the move a name.
The Pony.
Of course!
That’s why it looked familiar. It reminded me of the way characters dance in old Scooby-Doo and Josie and the Pussycats cartoons.

And my Jazzercise friend?
That woman can Pony.

I still need to learn her name, which is particularly embarrassing because she already knows mine. That almost never happens.

Jazzercise Receipts

I burned 616 calories, earned 111 Active Zone Minutes, averaged 138 beats per minute, and hit a new cardio-load peak of 103.

Apparently Lauren and the accidental five-pound dumbbells came to play.

And the wild Monkey-engineered bed head?
Sweat enough, and apparently it tames down eventually.

So Jazzercise #16 began with a successful fire drill for a fictional class and ended with me taking off like a rocket in the real one.

Fire drill: successful.
Actual class: successful.
New instructor: successfully followed.
Five-pound dumbbells: survived.
Hair: eventually subdued.
Pony: activated.