So far the Reebok Core class at the gym has been my favorite: lots of balancing, requiring strong muscle around my middle (note to self: develop same). The instructor leads well in that she's clear and consistent, but I wish I could stop noticing that her breasts and tan are fake and that her upper lip (? the actual skin between her mouth and nose) is pierced. I imagine yoga, more than the three tapes I've followed haphazardly over the years, real yoga I mean, requires strength of micro-control. I also liked the one "piyo" class, a combination of pilates and yoga, that I attended.
But I found a found a real yoga class at a yoga studio that I can walk to. One that isn't bikram. I was excited to see another, closer studio open, until I learned it offers only bikram, which frankly sounds like hell on earth. Maybe if I go hardcore I'll appreciate the extra bendiness and pore-cleansing a superheated yoga class offers, but not now.
After realizing that Halley was born in 1986, I thought of things besides the Comet that she wouldn't remember. Besides that, the biggest event of the my twelfth-grade year was the Challenger. And Chernobyl and Iran-Contra, but mostly the Challenger. This is her eleventh-grade year.
Some genius forgot to pack my sneakers before going to the gym. However, the same genius remembered to pack my swimsuit and goggles, so I swam for 40 minutes. I brought my bathing suit (cut straight across the chest in a square neckline) once before, when I did a few desultory laps and soaked in the hot tub for a while. My swimsuit, which I might call a racing suit if I swam fast enough for that, comes up to the neck. No drag.
Anyway, forty minutes and I entirely lost count of laps. It takes longer (for me) to swim a kilometer in a shorter pool (this one is 25 meters) than a longer because I can't do a flip-turn. If I could turn right, I could make up for twice as many turns by thrusting off the side.
What I'm really proud of is that two of those lengths (not laps) were butterfly. Sloppy, technically meritricious, I'm sure, but 2x25 meters of fly. My heart threatened to burst forth both times. I don't push myself swimming the way I ought to, and clearly my strength and stamina are not as developed as my determinedness. But they could be. I know I could already feel a difference in my deltoids.