It’s not so much that I’m out of shape, really, as it is that I just don’t exercise at all, and I know I don’t eat right. There’s pictures of me out there as a skinny little high school twig, but those days stopped shortly after graduation.

Jess, having both more free time and more common sense than I do, started doing some light exercise a few weeks ago – walks around the block, pushups, situps, and other things of that nature. However, her parents decided that wasn’t enough and decided to enroll her in a Tae-kwon-do class.

Jess was displeased.

But Jess went! She was still unhappy about it, mind you, but she went that first night and tried it out. Being the wonderful, awesome, supportive, and encouraging individual that I am, I told her that if she kept the classes up I would go to them with her.

Her parents also offered to pay for me to attend the class. Bonus!

Well the night of the class came, so we jumped in my car and headed up there. I’d tried to remember to drink a little more water than normal that day in the hopes that I wouldn’t dehydrate myself. 8:00 arrived and the class began!

We started with simple jogging around the room, with some basic kicks in there to help the leg muscles begin to warm up and loosen. Next we did x number of pushups, moved our feet to our hands and stretched forward again, then did x+1 pushups.

My geeky arms did not like that.

After the pushups we all sat on the floor and did more stretching. Spread your legs, stretch the hamstrings, basic stuff like that. I was able to handle that just fine, although I’m not as flexible as I really should be.

They split Jess and I off from the rest of the group after the stretches to work on things like punches and kicks, and I was really starting to feel the pain then. Shortness of breath, really dry throat (even though I kept getting water). They had us do pushups, and when we finished those I was leaning against the practice dummy trying to catch my breath.

After the pushups I asked if I could go sit down for a second, then promptly collapsed onto a stack of mats on the side of the room. I just… couldn’t move. I didn’t really feel comfortable sitting up, and I knew I definitely couldn’t stand. I just sat there dripping sweat on the mats, wishing I trusted myself to stand up and use the water fountain that was two feet away. I think I probably laid there for about 20 minutes before I was able to get up and not feel woozy, which was right about the time class was wrapping up.

That’s the crappy thing about jumping into exercise… it’s really easy to go past what you’re capable of if you don’t know your limit, and I flew right by mine.

When I finally felt okay to drive, I took Jess home and collapsed on her bed to finish cooling off.

I gotta say though, day two went much better. Even with the soreness from the first day I was able to go the entire class without having to step out (now that I knew how to pace myself). Now that I don’t feel like I’m about to die, it’s far more enjoyable.

I just need to buy a scale so I can actually see the effect of the class.