Breathless

I would consider Blake and I an athletic couple, him more than I, but nevertheless we are quite active. So Thursday night hit us both like a ton of bricks. We are SO out of shape. Before moving here, both of us had completed several races, some half-marathons, I did the three day hike up Machu Picchu, and Blake played on two ice hockey teams, and this summer we both hiked 21Km up Mt Robson and back, never thinking twice about our athleticism. A few weeks back we were asked to run in an Inter-Island Relay, each person covering 6.5km. We both finished our legs, but I had bad knee pain, and Blake was so tired that he had had to walk some of it. We made ourselves believe that it was just the heat and we really weren't in that bad of shape-the typical mantra of those who know they have a problem but can't face it. At the beginning of February Blake got me a gym membership, so I have been going regularly, doing weights and using the cardio equipment. I've done plenty of 3 mile beach walks with the girls, and Blake has had some great tennis games,and were under the impression that snorkelling was a great form of exercise, leading us both to believe that we were doing fine. Ha! On Thursday night I headed to the gym for my first group fitness aerobics class. I donned my pink cotton Body By Bennet shirt, smugly knowing that cotton was a good choice, since it was going to be a nice easy workout, after all, I was probably in better shape than at least half of the people there. Big Mistake. The billowy cotton only accentuated my clumsy movements and was soaked within the first 10 minutes, which, by the way, felt more like 40. Known sarcastically as "Grace" by my parents, and being referred to as "a bull in a china shop" on numerous occasions, I should have know that aerobics was not a good choice. I can only be thankful that there were only 8 of us in the class (oddly enough I was the one in the worst shape...) and that perhaps nobody noticed when I fell off my step three times, put my hands up when everyone else's were down, and had to stop and figure out the steps every two minutes. By the end, the lovely pink T-shirt was thoroughly wet, my face the shade of a sunburnt tourist and my whole body sore from being jerked in so many directions simultaneously. It wasn't much better for Blake either. Being Canadian, his radar let him to the only ball hockey league in the country, and he was asked to come play for a team on Thursday night. He excitedly left in the evening to meet the team at the nearby gym. At 10:20 pm he arrived home, T-shirt looking like it had just come out of the wash-soaked through the entire way with shorts and socks in the same condition. First words out of his mouth "I am so out of shape." In the end though, Blake did fare better than I. He scored 2 goals, had 2 assists and was a hit with the team, joining it for the rest of the season. We have learned our lesson though, just because we sweat 24/7 here, that does not make walking to the pool and taking out the garbage, a workout. We've both agreed to get more active, but this is all the more incentive for Joel to come and visit us so he can whip our wimpy not-so-white butts into shape!

Pictures: Proof of more active days. 1)At the summit of Machu Picchuing 2) Me prepping for half marathon 3) Blake after the Victoria Royal Half Marathon 4) Hiking Mt .Robson last summer