I went... dancing?!?!

So today was the opposite of productive.   It was C's knee surgery day, which meant driving to London and spending the majority of the day there and then driving home.  Now normally I'm all in for a road trip, and I can entertain myself alone in any city fairly easily.  Except...  Winter and stay at home order.  Everything would be closed AND no access to washrooms.  Fortunately, having discovered this the last time we went for an appointment, I thought ahead and booked a hotel room for the day.  Rental choice was 10-5 or 11-6, pretty much ideal.  Win :).  And the room was excellent - kitchen, desk, couch, bed...  I definitely could've moved in for an extended period and it certainly worked for the day.  

Not a bad place to spend the day :)  There was both a bed and a couch too.

Since I had booked the day off work my plan was to spend most of it doing schoolwork.  But then I thought a good way to kill some time would be a Spanish lesson...  C had to be dropped off at 10, so I booked a lesson for 10:30.  Got there, got checked in, connected to wifi.  All good.   Lesson was actually awesome.  Then after the lesson I was doing followup Spanish....  And then it was lunchtime, so I ventured out to find food.  When I came back watched some Spanish Netflix, thinking I'd start schoolwork after lunch...   And then C texted at like 1:10 to say he was awake.   Uh... Cool.  Okay, but I wasn't even done lunch yet?   lol.  He wanted to be picked up at 2:30 so I had a short nap (win!) and then went to get him.  Ended up being a little later than that but I was rocking out in my happy place at that point so no big deal.  

So drive home...  And I'm thinking order meds, work out, pick up meds, have dinner, do school...  All good, right?  Yeah.  Except then we hit construction which meant the drive would be longer than expected...  And the meds C already had were wearing off.  So reschedule and prioritize meds and just wait there till they were ready.   And when we got home, Dad offered to grab dinner for us so - awesome.  Just skip the workout idea and eat.

The second leg of my first ride creation

Which was awesome.  Except that then I felt SO blah.  Waaayyy too many calories and zero exercise today.   And zero inclination to do anything.  Ugh.   So decided I need to tackle either exercise or school.  And I *really* didn't feel like school.  So exercise for the win.  And this is where VR really is a win.  Because I 100% didn't want to work out...  But I could "just finish" my ride - there was less than 10km left.  And unlike in reality, the hills don't actually cause misery so it wasn't off-putting.  I could dial down to zero tension and just keep spinning the wheels and it counts.   And by the end of the ride, I was sweaty and my heartbeat was up -- so even though it was a definitely half-assed commitment (and I completely ignored Josh; I believe I even told him to F off at one point ;), I was still getting a workout.  And I felt better, so I decided to continue the ride.  Awesome right?   Except technology failed shortly after and I blue screened.   But then I was feeling good so I figured I'd do some of the games.

It didn't feel great while I was doing it,
but the gold boxes are very motivating :)

I started with boxing.  Just one round.  But then I broke all kinds of my own records and felt really good at the end, so decided to do just one more :).  To be fair, it was the easiest one I've ever done (I don't usually do the "light" workouts but I thought it was on this week's challenge so I figured I should - turns out it wasn't.  *sigh*  Ah well).  But yeah - highest streak ever.  So now I was thoroughly warmed up, arms slightly sore, and feeling good.  Okay.

No gold boxes this time, but I did it.

I didn't really want to do another round, and I definitely didn't feel like Oh Shape tonight.   Wait - why not try... Dancing?  Now those of you who know me, will understand why that's a question.  And those of you who don't know me but read the blog, will know I tried it once before and lasted less than 30 seconds before I quit with a strong feeling of "never again".   

Essentially you follow this dancer's movements...
Suffice to say, she's *slight* more graceful than I ;)

So this time I was a little smarter -- I picked the easiest level and one that was only 3 mins long.  Well, not only was it a riot, it was a really good workout?!?!  Certainly equal to, albeit very different from, boxing.  So yeah -- I'll try that again, but will have to work my way up from the bottom level.

Notice the "light" intensity and the almost dead last placing ;-P

After that, decided I just wanted to play.  So Beat Saber was up.  To put into perspective, I was now a sold 45 minutes into the workout I wasn't going to do.  And in Beat Saber I broke record after record after record.  And I was having a blast.  And oh my god were my arms ever feeling it.  They don't usually feel it but after weights on the bike, boxing, and dancing (?!?!) I guess it was the final line.   

Notice "New Highscore" in both :)  
Better still if that A was an S, but I'll get there...

Somebody else in one of my forums passed her first ever Expert + level today, so I was all inspired to try that.  She'd gone back to one of the original songs to do so, so I did as well.  And I failed.   Hard.  Time, after time, after time.   Lol sharing this too just so you have a realistic picture of it :).  BUT what it did, was improve the workout portion of the day as "just one more time" over and over, every time is a workout.  Alas, I never did pass the level although I got close.  I suspect someday soon there will be an excited "first Expert + ever" post.  But today is not that day.

I saw this many, many, times tonight.
And then I did it once more, just to take a picture.

I did go back and do one more round of the songs I like just to finish on a happy note :)

One more for the win :)

So yeah -- admittedly, my schoolwork remains undone, I'm still *way* over the calories for today and will just barely make my 10,000 steps if I go do another lap around the house.  But I feel SO much better and am more alive.  And it was fun.  Like legitimately fun, not go-to-the-gym, "I suffered through this with other people so we're going to pretend it was fun" fun.  So that counts for a lot.  And this is where I think VR fitness succeeds when many other types fail.  It may not be as intense as many of the other programs I've tried, but it's very easy to pick it up even when you *really* just can't.   And any time I have done this, I've gotten a far better workout than I'd intended.   Without my Quest, at *most* I would've done maybe 5 minutes on the bike today.  So yeah.  Deeming it a win.