Last Friday I was happy to have made it to class, but ended up leaving during adagio. I did take the weekend off, with full intent of going to class Monday.
Monday I tried to go to the noon Advanced Beginner class. I really did try. I hit the road at my normal time (about 11am). As I turned onto the highway entrance ramp I saw nothing but stopped cars on both the entrance ramp and the highway. Google Maps said there was a 5 minute delay. Ten minutes into the 5 minute delay I'd managed to travel about 50 yards on the entrance ramp and hadn't even reached the highway yet.
After creeping in traffic for 25 minutes I'd managed to travel 1.4 miles to the next exit. That's an average speed of 3.4 MPH; the average person walks at about 4 MPH, so I literally could have walked faster. At that point I could see a burned-out car and police vehicles blocking the left side of the highway ahead. Beyond that the road was clear, but I'd lost so much time I wouldn't have gotten to class until at least 15-20 minutes after it started. Even aside from the rarely-enforced rule saying you can't join a class more than 10 minutes after it starts, missing that much of barre just didn't sound like a good idea. Frustrated, I took the exit and drove home.
Having missed Monday's noon class I decided to go to the Tuesday evening class. It's officially a "Beginner II" class, but given how I'd done in Friday's class I thought it might be smart to step down a level. Besides, I really like this instructor and I don't end up in her classes very often anymore. Barre and adagio went pretty well, but by the time we got to petit allegro I was tired and starting to hurt. I skipped both petit and grand allegro but stuck around for reverence.
Class today (Friday) was much better. None of the muscle cramps of last Friday. Balance much improved. For the first time in quite a while I participated in everything, including the jump prep and petit allegro. All four single pirouettes seem to work pretty consistently, though they deteriorate a bit as I tire. I have enough brain cycles to think about spotting, but not enough to consider attempting a double in any direction.
During the last iteration of the grand allegro exercise I was really getting tired and landed a tour jete badly. My balance was way too far forward and if my landing foot had slipped even a bit I might have ended up on my face. Instead it was just... ummm.. ungraceful and I finished the exercise with only my pride bruised.
I'm still not back to where I was last fall, before the whole foot thing started. But I'm on my way back.
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