Ow! Ow Ow!

Have I mentioned the exercise-for-slothful-fat-people study I'm enrolled in? Yesterday was my first full session working with the trainer and getting acquainted with the apparatus. It was so easy, so ridiculously effortless, I refused to believe this was doing any good. Exercise? How could it be possible if I was doing it and yet I wasn't miserable?

HA!
Ow. I can't be adamant. It hurts. My gut hurts, my abs hurt, my quads are not pleased. The only thing I dislike more than the tedious nature of exercise is...the pain. It's the main reason I stopped exercising. Boredom is one thing, but discomfort, well, I just can't stand it. Discomfort with sweat--no. No. No. No.

The trainer said I might feel this way today, but I was optimistic. That'll teach me. This reminds me of something that happened in 1994. I belonged to a gym but hated working out in the cardio and weight rooms. I thought, "surely, water aerobics is the way to go. Lots of old ladies and fragile people with blown out knees. How hard can it be?"

I got to the pool and put on the chunky, blue floatation belt. I took off my glasses and jumped in the water. And...floated like one of those red and white bobbers that go on a fishing line. My ass is big enough to be its own rather effective flotation device, so the flotation belt just threw me into some new anti-gravity state that made me have to fight tipping face-first into the water.

It took me a minute to realize the instructor wouldn't actually be in the water. This was distressing because without my glasses, she was nothing more than a chirpy blur on the pool deck. The indoor pool area was a sonic nightmare of echoes and swallowed voices that bounced around the walls but never regathered into coagulated words. In short, I couldn't see anything and I couldn't hear worth shit.

I did my best and paddled, kicked, arm circled, and underwater walked my way through the class. I thought it was a ridiculous excuse for a workout. Until the next day. The alarm went off, and I threw back the covers to get out of bed. My legs wouldn't move. Well, they would, but only with great effort that sent excrutiating pain through my limbs. Every part of my body hurt. I eventually sucked up the ab pain and made my way to the shower.

I moved like a robot. I moved stiffly as if I had no joints, like a Barbie, but short and without good boobs. The old people, with the help of perky-the-instructor, had kicked my ass.

You'd think I would have learned that it's the seemingly innocuous exercise that bares its torturing teeth the next day.

OK, then.Only another eight weeks of using the wood and steel torture device. Joseph Pilates was obviously a sadist with a sense of humor.