We came across a delightful new workout in August: The Microbrew & Music Festival. We highly recommend it. Alas, we know it seems at odds with our early morning bike rides and late evening runs. But it turned out to be the perfect complement to the many health benefits currently sought by these 30-something women.
So it began:
We collected our friends in our vehicles and set out into the night—without children of any size or shape. We immediately did what we won’t let them do: turned up the radio and waved to strangers at stoplights.
It was our warm-up. We were feeling stodgy and stiff from a summer of providing constant maid and chaperone services. But tonight was different. We looked good in our new workout clothes: dark denim blue jeans (so new that a millimeter of shrinkage hadn’t yet produced the muffin), cute blouses, accessories and, ensuring a month’s worth of chiropractic adjustments, high-heeled boots.
A feeling of well-being came over us. The casting off of our ratty, holey sweatpants gave a thrill much like that of matching Nike duds bought at the start of every diet.
We weren’t even at the Brewfest yet and our mental health was improving, our waistline muffin-free.
In a half-hour we were inside the gates. There were beer tents in full circle. It was the most nourishing thing we’d seen since school let out in June.
“How many drink tickets come with our armbands?” Immediately, we wanted to know how healthy we were going to get.
“Five.” Five seemed like a serious workout with the added bonus that we wouldn’t be sore in the morning.
We set out, with a healthy interest in a renovated bus occupied by a goateed man handing frothy beverages out one of the side passenger windows.
But we didn’t get far. We kept running into people we hadn’t seen all summer due to the strict confines of our maid and chaperone services. There were introductions, re-introductions and a fair amount of high-fiving. Our emotional health was climbing, and rapidly. We started to feel human again and, dare we say, on track to our fastest mile ever.
“What are you drinking?” As is customary, we compared training plans each time before moving on.
As we progressed ever closer to the bearded man, we noticed he was being assisted by a friend of ours… who works at a health club. More high-fiving. Proof that we were on to something.
In an hour, we were warmed up. We were shocked to see we’d used only one drink ticket. It appeared that a night of freedom, while trapped inside a fence, was invigorating with or without liquid sustenance. We secretly prided ourselves on our low intake of calories.
Next, we decided to hit the silent disco, highly recommended by the bus driver.
But it sounded ridiculous, didn’t it, to gather in a quiet room with people and work up a sweat?
Or just like a gym.
We donned the headsets and were immediately overcome with a groove unlike any found on the stations radioed into a treadmill headset. This was where the squats, lunges and salutes to the sun came in. The workout began in earnest. We hit our stride.
At last, when we couldn’t do another single heel-to-butt kick, we headed over to the outdoor concert for the cool down. We were coming into the finale and it felt good. There was a lot of hooting and hollering, like a finish line at a race. Our legs ached, we were drenched in sweat and we had blisters on every toe. If we’d had a timing chip on, we’d been taking the podium.
And, it was only 10 p.m. We still had time to stretch and hit the showers before heading to bed… for our regularly scheduled workout the very next morning.
May you find ways to enjoy a good workout, wherever it may be.