It's the heat AND the humidity!

After taking a week off for the US 4th of July holiday, I went back to class this weekend. I'd piloted a charitable medical airlift mission Friday, and despite guzzling water during the 5.5 hours aloft I managed to get myself pretty thoroughly dehydrated. Waking up Saturday morning I realized that going to class would be foolhardy and made plans to go Sunday instead.

By Sunday I'd mostly gotten my fluid levels rebalanced, and although I usually enjoy the challenge of Susan's Saturday class I was kinda looking forward to the slower pace and easier routines of Julie's Sunday morning class.

When I checked in at the desk Sunday morning, the desk clerk smiled and said, "Susan's class?" Since I'm usually in Susan's Saturday class, and remembering with amusement the incident a few weeks ago, I grinned and replied, "Well, Julie's class." To which she replied, "It's Susan; she's substituting today." So much for my thoughts of an easier class.

In Susan's defense, she does turn the complexity down a notch when she's substituting for Julie, but that still is several notches more complex than usual for this class. I did reasonably well, even managing to perform a pretty decent (for me) penché in centre work. Toward the end of class, though, my legs got a bit wobbly. By the time I got home I was pretty well exhausted and I ended up taking a nap.

Monday night I didn't sleep well, waking up at about 4am and only getting a short nap before work. Tuesday evening I hit traffic on my way to class and arrived later than I wanted. As I walked quickly down the halls I was struck by how few people there were, and shocked to find the studio for this class empty. It was only after chatting with Susan in the hall that I realized that instead of arriving 5 minutes late I'd actually arrived 25 minutes early. Oops. No harm done, but it shows that my brain wasn't fully engaged.

Class Tuesday was pretty much the same as Sunday, except being dialed up to its usual "11" for a Beginner 2 class. With only 9 students and everyone subdued due to the heat and humidity, Susan was able to give more individualized corrections and still finished barre earlier than usual. With more time left for centre work and fewer students participating, the class felt better organized than usual. On the other hand, the heat and humidity, and the speed with which the two practice groups alternated, also made it grueling. I sat out a few short segments because I was too tired to mentally absorb the sequence of steps, even though the sequence itself wasn't that complicated, often jumping back in during the second repetition.

Aside from not having had enough sleep, I think my biggest problem was that I didn't eat properly. Normally I eat a late lunch on class days that I have the energy for class but not a full stomach. Tuesday I ate lunch early and didn't eat anything again until after class. All this in combination knocked my IQ down quite a bit. I'll try to avoid doing this again.