I look forward to going to the Y to work out a couple days a week. Tuesday is one of them, and my new obsession is cardio tennis. You are supposed to keep your feet moving the whole time, and there’s a lot of running after balls and trying to hit them and what not.

Having spent a good part of my summer at the tennis court, I was excited to finally make my way to the tennis house at the Y. The class is free for the first visit. I was hooked from the very first day, even though I got a bit dehydrated and came home red-faced. My daughter could tell by the glow in my eyes I’d be back. I tell everyone I see about it, and my brother joined the class, as did my friend Carol.

Today the aerobics instructor/tennis pro introduced a new game. We paired off and played a round of doubles with another pair. As soon as anyone scored 1 point, we’d run to the other side of the net. While we were running, the teacher would throw a ball high in the air, and the first person to get to the other side would return the ball to the other side. Do you see where the cardio fits in here?

The large class was sweating through this game when one of the new people ran to the other side of the net, met the ball, and then slipped, lost her footing and fell down. It looked embarrassing, and would have been funny if she had gotten back up. But she didn’t. She lay there in pain.

The teacher ran to her side and told the rest of us to pick up the balls. It seemed like there were only 5 balls on the ground, we got them up so quickly. One of the people in the class had a medical background. She examined the woman, heard that she’d hurt her left ankle and her thumb, and suggested she go to the hospital. The patient wanted the teacher to go with her.

That’s when I found out that the core class members, the people that go to the class twice a week, and take several other exercise classes together, had planned a baby shower for the teacher today. And there was that pesky matter of this being an aerobics class and we had to keep our feet moving. So we played a couple more games. The core people rescheduled the shower for Thursday, and Carol and I tried to do abs without benefit of the teacher trying to kill us.

Carol and I also take the class at the other Y on Friday evenings. That class is more tennis, less cardio. I like the balance of the two. My shins are usually hurting so badly from the Tuesday and Thursday class that I don’t like to take it two days in a row. I may make an exception this week.

I want to join the baby shower.