THE DOMS

On the last day of school, I packed every dumbell, all exercise balls and my plyometric laddar out of my classroom into my car. I had taken to teaching a Bootcamp class, two afternoons a week to some of the staff. We'd had a lot of fun sweating together, but over the summer, I planned to continue my workouts at home, HA!!! 

Just yesterday, I picked every dumbell, all exercise balls and the plyometric ladder, up off the garage floor where it had sat all summer and loaded it back into my car.  All the good intentions in the world had not been enough to make me to leave the sunshine, my running paths and the bike trails to spend anytime at all on developing my biceps.  Yesterday afternoon though, my biceps got a wake up call!  Only a few short months ago I had biceps and as far as I was concerned they surly must still exist. I am not the kind of athlete who believes that I could have possibly gotten out of shape, just because I took a break from working out.  As I shouted words of encouragement to the ladies I was training, I curled, pressed, squated, side raised and lunged with weights similar to those that I had lifted in June. I crunched, skipped and stepped with the same vigour I had during the last week of school.  I wiped my face with a fresh towel, waved good bye  to my sweaty friends and headed for home, wondering how I was so lucky to be one of those people who could stay fit and strong without spending all summer in the gym...this morning, I realized, I AM NOT!!!!!  My legs barely supported my weight as I threw them over the bed and tried to stand up.  I braced myself against the wall as my legs wobbled under the pressure of holding up my body and felt pain race across my chest. Not heart attack pain, but chest muscle pain.  I stumbled to the bathroom, sure that my walk resembled that of someone with a stick shoved down their pants.  It took me 20 seconds to lower myself to the toilett seat, my quads screamed, but not as loud as my butt cheeks upon contact with the porcelain.  Scrubbing my hair and applying mascara proved to be challenging as my shoulders burned and fatigued after only a few seconds of being raised.  I grabbed the railing with both hands, but getting down the stairs was slow and painful!! All day, I hobbled along, strained to sit and avoided all stairs.  My entire body screamed, "you did this to yourself, you idiot!!!!!!"  The ladies who had sweated with me, cursed me all day as they too struggled to do everyday simple tasks like sit on the toilet seat and sneeze! I did my best to try to disguise the fact, that I too was suffering and thought, OMG, if we think this is bad, wait until tomorrow, when the DOMS (delayed onset muscle sorness) set in for real! Ahhhhh!! No pain, no gain right?????