THE MEANDERWALKER

I’ve been doing yoga and pilates regularly for about two years now, so I’ve been feeling pretty strong in the ab region. But any time I try to go for a run these days, I start huffing and puffing about 5 minutes in and it ends up taking me about 20 minutes to run one mile (and I keep woefully saying to myself “I USED TO RUN 5 MILES A DAY DAMMIT!!”). As a result, I always talk myself out of running one way or another, until finally I just had to concede to the fact that running 5 miles a day just doesn’t work into my life right now. And I really don’t like gyms. I need structure, scheduled times, regularity, familiar faces.

Obviously, I need JAZZERCISE.

It’s weird – when you become interested in an aerobic exercise-slash-dance class that dropped out of the mainstream trend pool right around the time you were born, you find it’s pretty difficult to confidently work it into a conversation in order to gauge the interested of your friends. I’m not sure how it came about — we were probably talking about how we’ve both fallen entirely out of shape from sitting at a desk day in and day out — but somehow it came to light that my carpooling friend KatieB and I both secretly wanted to try Jazzercise.

The only problem: I’m not very coordinated and I have no rhythm that is at all applicable to any sort of dancing scenario. And this became more than evident last night at our first-ever Jazzercise class.

Our local Jazzercise troop (I say “troop” because their hierarchy of franchises is eerily similar to the Girl Scouts) meets in a low-ceilinged room tucked away in the back of a small Methodist church about a mile away from both of our houses in Durham. Once we snaked our way through the halls, following the stream of older, t-shirt-clad ladies, we were met by an overly enthusiastic woman who greeted us with open arms (like, literally). It’s possible she was more excited for us to be there than we were (and we were pretty stoked – I was telling my coworkers how excited I was all day). She also told us that since it was our first class, it was FREE, which increased the general excitement level even more.

We finished filling out our information cards and getting the quick orientation just in time for the class to start. I didn’t have much time to size up the rest of the Jazzercisers, but I did notice that the majority of the women (who were, on average, at least 20 years my senior) were not exactly “svelte,” per se, even the ones who were celebrating their like 500th class, which made me a little bit skeptical about Judy Sheppard Missett and her workout regimen.

But, I was skeptical for all of about 5 minutes into class, at which time I started to sweat and suffer from a side-stitch. Not to mention I was practically tripping over my own feet trying to do the triple-step march and the criss-cross leg jumping. There was a lot of bouncing happening, and it was obvious that I hadn’t done much jumping recently, since I found that I’m not used to different parts of my body falling victim to gravity in much different ways.

I got the hang of it by the third routine or so. I think it was the Mary J. Blige track where I really came into my own, though. Just in time to slow things down with a little Amy Winehouse. Yeah, I didn’t know what kind of music and routines to expect, either, but apparently they update the music regularly (although I’m not so sure the dance moves have changed much since the 80s). I’m also pretty certain that none of the other women in the class besides myself and Katie even knew who Amy Winehouse was, though, since we were the only ones who laughed when the instructor — an entirely normal-looking fitness instructor — cracked a joke about Amy Winehouse being “a really pretty girl” (see left).

By the end of the hour-long class, I was exhausted. And sweaty. And I felt pretty good about it. We talked to the instructor for a couple minutes before leaving — after she had packed up her microphone — and I think she was more than happy to see a couple of people in the class that were actually younger than she is. She mentioned how some of her friends think Jazzercise is weird and dated and she always has to tell them “We don’t wear leotards and leg warmers anymore, I promise!” As if that makes it better somehow? I told her that I wish we did.

While I sat on the couch for the rest of the evening, watching reruns of What Not To Wear, I could feel my body getting achier and achier. And right around the time I was going to sleep, a muscle in my right arm started twitching, it kept twitching all night, and it’s still twitching as I write this. But I had so much energy that I could barely get to sleep. Also, my sides and back are still really achey. And Katie text messaged me at about 10:30pm last night: “I can barely move!“

I’d say it was a pretty good workout. And I pretty much laughed through the whole thing while the older ladies in the class hooted, snapped, clapped and wooed at all the right times in the songs. They obviously love it and go to class almost every day of the week.

Needless to say, we’re going back on Sunday.