Home sweet gym.

The salsa class a couple of weeks ago was fantastic, and I was definitely interested in returning for more and more. But, they are private classes, and the price adds up, so I decided to keep exploring my options before committing.

We stopped by the gorgeous gym next door, where it took the saleswoman 30 minutes to explain the many enrollment options and the many, many benefits of being a member. It was an awesome place, but the only way to get it under $100 per month was to pay the whole year up front. Since we'll be moving in another month or two and we don't yet know where to, I didn't want to do that.

Up the hill there's a kid's dance studio which, to my great sadness, does not offer adult ballet classes. They do, however, have an adult rumba class every morning. First one's free, so I dropped by last week. It's a sort of mix of steps from a variety of dance styles, and as we got started I wondered if it was going to manage to be a big enough cardio challenge for me.

Uh, yes.

There were only two times when the steps tripped me up, and the instructor was quick to give me a little one-on-one attention until I was up to speed. Aside from that, they were big, fast movements that wore me out.

It was awesome. So I told the teacher I'd be back on a Tues/Thurs schedule.

Also last week, we met a guy in our building (from Colorado!) who does Crossfit. I've been wanting to try this for ages, and he said I should come along sometime. First class is, after all, free. So I did that today.

I had no illusions that this would be too easy. In fact, I was almost scared. I've been keeping in shape with yoga, pilates, running, and some cardio kickboxing, but I haven't done a workout with weights in over a year, let alone one as challenging as I've always heard Crossfit to be.

If you're not familiar, Crossfit workouts vary but they're always intense. Today's warmup was some walking lunges and wall sits while holding a 10-pound medicine ball at shoulder level. This was followed by a 12-minute segment. To start, we had one minute to do 12 squats (with weight). If you finish early, which you do, you rest until the second minute starts, at which time we did an overhead press with dumbbells. The third minute was 15 dynamic planks (hands to elbows and back). We repeated those three exercises four times.

Then came the WOD, or Workout of the Day: 300 jump ropes, 45 PULL-UPS (deargoddeargoddeargod), 45 thrusters (a squat into an overhead press with the bar), and another 300 jumping jacks. As fast as you can, with a limit of 15 minutes.

The pull-ups were every bit as difficult as I expected, if not moreso. I can do pull-ups, but I've never made them a part of my workout aside from proving to myself that I'm capable of them, so I've only ever done a couple at a time. Never 45. I did get to use an elastic band that helped a little bit, but not enough to enable me to go to sleep tonight believing I'll be able to move my arms tomorrow.

After that, the thrusters were tough, but I broke them into sets of 15, 15, 10, and 5. I finished the whole workout with about 30 seconds to spare, which was pretty much on par with the rest of the class.

Tired, but successful. And I really liked it. That free class. Always gets you.

The best part for my ego was, as I was thanking the instructor, I learned that he hadn't realized that was my first time in class. WIN.

Not such a win: tomorrow I'm going back to rumba, and I'm going to feeeeeeeeeeeeeeel it.