Still jet-lagged, I dragged myself to class Tuesday evening. I'd woken up at 3:30am local time, and by the start of class at 7:15pm my head was thick with fog. I arrived at the studio almost an hour before class, and mindful of my three weeks off I took special care to warm up slowly.
Fortunately, our instructor had also recently returned from her own vacation, and barre was relatively routine. Surprisingly I felt incipient cramps in my calf muscles almost immediately, something that hasn't happened in a long time, though I was able to avoid a full-on cramp. Just more proof that walking city streets and hiking cliff-top trails uses different muscles than ballet.
Apparently I learn dance steps better when my brain is turned off. I still don't pick things up as fast as some of the other students, but I did better than I expected. One such sequence was sauté arabesque, faille, jeté, jeté, sauté arabesque, faille, pas de chat, pas de chat. I had the greatest difficulty getting my feet to transition to the jeté, but no real trouble transitioning to the pas de chat. Weird, eh?
Wednesday morning I woke up hurting from hips to feet, with my right adductors (inside of the thigh) threatening one of those screaming cramps I used to get. I avoided that, but trying to walk resulted in knife-like pain across the back of my right heel. My best guess is that with so much time to stretch before class I over-did it. Sometimes you can't win for losing! This morning it's much better, though.
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