Faking it through lululemon classes...

Last weekend was an active one for me! I began with a lululemon pilates class in the store on Saturday morning at 9:30. I'd like to add that I've never actually done pilates before, but my doctor has been trying to get me to try it for years highlighting is positives for overall strength and injury prevention. The class was at the Wayne store - they move all the displays aside and everyone sets up in the middle. There was actually a girl there who plays Field Hockey for Villanova - so she became my "Don't know what we are doing" buddy... though I never actually informed her of this.

Overall, the class was good. The teacher was really nice and helpful. It wasn't too strenuous, lots of stretching, a few difficult series of exercises. The hard part is to get your body to move in a controlled manner, not the willy-nilly method I typically fall back on when stumbling through most coordination-involved tasks. Best part about the class is looking at all the lululemon clothes that I want to buy. Only I made a vow to not shop at all during the month of February (I've almost made it...) so I had to refrain from actual purchases.

At noon I met Marina for our long run and tempo. We can finally run at Haverford again which makes my shins veerrryyy happy. The Main Line area had some freaky winds on Saturday with gusts up to 50 mph... so we tried to tempo through this sheltered neighborhood. It was great - except for one stretch where you ran directly into the wind for about a quarter mile. We're 16 minutes into the tempo, everythings going great, and we hit a wall. For about a minute, Marina and I are struggling into the wind when I pretty much just start walking. No really... I know my legs were moving foward and I was trying really hard, but it felt like running the wrong way up an escalator. I may have even been going backwards. To make it more embarassing, we had to pass in front of a police officer who had the road closed due to downed powerlines (it was that windy!). I'm fairly certain he almost got out of the car to offer me some sort of life support. Or an ambulance. Once we turned the corner out of the wind, I looked at my watch and we were at 18:30 (yes it was less than 2 minutes into the wind that had me seeing the light at the end of the tunnel)... so of course I preceeded to sprint and catch up to Marina for the very end of the tempo. It's all about the kick... right??

Sunday was my day off from running - so I swam laps in the morning and then went to a lululemon sponsored yoga class in Wayne. One thing they forget to mention about these classes is they are not beginner classes. I walk in to a room of everyone laying down with their eyes closed. I chose to saddle up next to this guy about my age who doesn't look really look like he knows what he's doing either (because who really wants to be next to the best yogi in the class??). I should mention the only time I've ever done yoga before was once in high school with Jessica when we went to an advanced class and proceeded to giggle/fall through the entire thing and once at Wake where you pretty much just did Downward Dog over and over again. So the class starts out with the leader telling us to go into "Rabbit" position. I'd like to ad that I know what NONE of these positions are - cobra, cat, rabbit, etc. - and our instructor had a heavy accent which made it hard to understand his limited descriptions. Add that to the fact that I'm generally hard of hearing - and I was clueless. Lucky for me, guy next to me actually did know what he was doing. So I proceeded to suppertisiously copy him for the entire hour while trying to look as yoga-esque as possible [heavy breathing, closed eyes, calm facial expression, and the works]. Not sure if I got away with it or not...