Zumba!

It's official. I have now been Zumbafied. After last week's thwarted attempt to shake and wriggle around in front of a bunch of strangers (short story: instructor turned up late on a cold and dark night, only to have brought the wrong set of keys; I came home very grumpy and it resulted in me baking cheese scones instead), I decided to give it another go. Even though I was informed by the Twitterverse that Zumba is merely a fad but baking will last forever (I tend to agree). And it was awesome!

I was wary about what I could cope with after recovering from a back injury. The answer is, "almost everything". The moves are all low impact and range from sedate to high energy, resulting in a great sweat but without too much pain. We grooved out to everything from cheesy 80s music to merengue and salsa. There was a huge age range among the women there (and the two token men). I was thrilled to bump into an old school friend also trying Zumba for the first time. It turns out it was her mother who bugged her to come. This amazing 70-year-old woman kept up with everyone else in class and hardly ever stopped for a rest. Apparently she goes to aerobics 3-4 times a week, but only if she has the time - some weeks she's too busy!

I'll admit there were moments when I expected a tv crew to raid the hall and shout, "Smile! You're on Candid Camera". But the rest of the time was taken up by trying to mimic our instructor bouncing away at the front of the class and grinning manically among a sea of similarly smiling, yet dreadfully uncoordinated, folk around me. True.

Have you been Zumbafied? Would you consider it? I'm really surprised to say that I loved it and hope to make it a weekly event.