I'm on Day Six of my 25 days of continuous attendance at Jazzercise! During the last six days it has become painfully clear (and I mean that literally) that I need new shoes. My back is killin' me! I work hard in class. I do a lot of jumping, jogging, lunging, marching, skipping, and just all-around steppin' to the music while pumping my arms, keeping my abs tight, and using my core muscles to avoid straining my back or neck. In spite of all my efforts to do the moves correctly, I'm still having low-back pain.

It's gotta be the shoes. Improper fitting shoes, broken down shoes, the wrong shoes for the sport, all these things can cause problems in the back, hips, knees, ankles and feet.

I've been way overdue for buying new shoes, and exercising every day has really brought the issue to the forefront. I don't like shopping; in spite of being female, somehow I was born totally lacking the shopping gene. Finally, after suffering with the onset of backpain for the past few days, I got myself in gear and went out to buy shoes. For years I've been partial (and very loyal) to the New Balance brand of shoes. Being picky like that makes it harder to find just the right shoes, which is another reason why I kept putting it off. I simply do not enjoy the hunt! But I got lucky and, yesterday, found them at the only second store I went to. And they were on sale!

So, when I go to the 6 p.m. class today I should be all set to come home withOUT an aching back.

I'll have blisters instead.

I'm keeping to my goal (so far) of attending 25 Jazzercise classes in 25 days. Three down and 22 to go! Of course, there's always a price to pay. My back, neck and shoulders are aching! I'm lucky in that I'm not having any trouble with knees, hips or ankles....YET! But I've dug out every tube of muscle rub cream we own, as well as a couple bottles of pain relief tabs.

When I got home from class this morning, got the shower done, pain meds applied, I read a couple of blogs. One blog that I follow (out of 48 - yeah, I know, I need to get a life) is written by a man named Tim. Among the topics he writes about are exercise and diet. Last night he wrote about the breakfast he'd had that morning of steel-cut oats, and it sounded so good that I decided to have oatmeal myself today.

I don't have the steel-cut variety (I understand they are really good for you so I'm going to see if I can find some) but I've got the regular old-fashioned type. I like to make my hot cereals with milk instead of water, but remembered that I'd finished off the milk with my dinner last night. I thought I'd use powdered milk but I couldn't find it in our stuffed & cluttered pantry. However, I did run across a box of WestSoy unsweetened vanilla-flavored Soy Milk. Hm! I was a little unsure how it would taste so I used 1/2 water and 1/2 soy milk when I prepared the oatmeal. It was delicious!! Tomorrow I plan to use all soy milk. I highly recommend this. The vanilla flavor added a nice touch and with the small amount of brown sugar that I usually add it was more like a dessert than a healthy, good-for-you breakfast. Plus, it's nice to be using that box of soy milk because I have no idea how long ago I bought it!
So that's my story for today, so far. The rest of the day will be spent getting some of my digital scrapbooking work done, a little grocery shopping, lunch in the garden so I can enjoy my single stalk of gladiola blooms while it lasts, and then, well, I think I may need to lay down and rest my poor, old, aching muscles (but aching in a good way, of course)!

Tuesday evening I went to Jazzercise Benicia, as usual, for the 7:15 p.m. step class. The instructors always recognize and announce milestones in class attendance as each person reaches them. Toward the end of class our instructor, Jennifer, announced that I had reached the level of 25 classes. Twenty-five classes in SIX months???

How embarrassing!!!

It's never taken me this long to reach the 25-class mark in the six years I've been going to Jazzercise.

As I collected my handful of Hershey's kisses from Jen, and another lady received hers for having reached 100 (yes, one hundred) classes, I decided I needed to do something about my embarrassing and pathetic attendance for 2008. I mean, really, 25 classes in 6 months is only an average of 4 classes per month! Even subtracting 2 weeks for my trip to China, and another 2 weeks for my son's wedding, that's still only 5 classes per month. Ouch. Besides, it's ridiculous, now that I work from home and my schedule is totally flexible (and no more commuting to Napa), that I can't get to class more often than that!

So I've made a short-term goal of attending class EVERY DAY for the next 25 days, and after that a more long-term goal to attend a minimum of 4 classes per week for the rest of the year. I Googled Jazzercise Benicia's website and printed off their class schedule and stuck it to my fridge with magnets. I prefer step classes vs the regular jazzercise classes so I circled all of the step classes. There's at least one every day of the week. Perfect.And I'm off to a good start.

Yesterday I went to the 8:10 a.m. step class. Tonight is the 7:15 p.m. class that I regularly attend, and tomorrow I'll again go to the 8:10 a.m. class. I've already got my excercise clothes ready for tonight, as you can see from the first photo (Jack helped).

One day down, 24 to go!