No pain, no gain: another barre session wraps up

“The shaking is good ladies.”

That is what our barre teacher tells us as our muscles twitch as we wrap up a particularly long and difficult set of squats.

It’s actually incredible how much your legs can shake as you get exhausted. It’s almost funny, as we are supposed to be squeezing a ball between our thighs – my legs are so busy doing the funky chicken it really looks like I might be controlling those squeezes, I’m not.

Sometimes I find myself wondering why I am doing this to myself. Then I set on the scale or look at the definition slowly appearing in my legs and I remember.

Also motivating, our teacher looks like she stepped off a fitspo blog and the other day I overheard her tell someone that she runs ultra-marathons, for fun.

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Barre

Ever tried a barre class?

Holy hell. If you have, you understand what I mean, if you haven’t let me try to explain.

I run, a lot, I have a personal trainer that I see at least once a week, I like to think I am relatively strong and in shape. Barre showed me exactly how not strong I am. But it did it in such a fun and exhausting way I can hardly wait for it to kick my ass.

For those of you how now have NO idea what I am on about … Barre is the bar that you see ballerinas use in dance studios. You know in dance movies where they are holding on while stretching and doing pliés. That. It’s a lot of work to be on your toes all the time. I have a brand new respect for dancers (on top of the respect I already had!)

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Running: Every step counts

This morning I ran a 10K race – my first ever. I wanted to come in less than one hour.

59:45 Wheeee!!!

Two-and-a-half years ago if you told me I would be running I would have responded with something along the lines of, the only way I’d run is if I was being chased by a bear. Now, with four 5Ks under my belt and my first 10K completed, I couldn’t imagine my life without running.

Running has changed how I eat – because running after binging on not healthy food the night before, sucks. It’s changed how I work out, how I look and how I feel about myself.

If you’ve ever considered running – don’t be held back. Start slow. My first “run” I walked for five minutes, ran for 30 seconds, and then repeated that cycle for 30 minutes. Overtime the run portions became longer, things hurt less and I started to appreciate the time I had with myself.

My initial plan was to go out and have a totally gross breakfast as my reward, but I was feeling so good, I came home and had a super healthy smoothie … and a couple of eggos.Here’s to that good feeling that stays after getting the runner’s high.

Green Smoothie Goodness – avocado, frozen banana, spinach, chocolate milk

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