8th Trapeze Class

As you probably guessed from my Friday post, trapeze class stepped up another level again. Man, am I sore! I wish I had an ice pack taped to my right neck/shoulder area. I put my body through a beating last night. Ok. Enough wining. That will get me nowhere.

The good news is that I have a preliminary routine choreographed. It's a pretty intense set of tricks, so I'm possibly being over ambitious. I will definitely need to build up some additional stamina to be able to do it all. I have no idea of how long the entire sequence takes to do (because I didn't go through the entire thing yet). I would bet it might be around 3 minutes, although that's a simple guess.

Routine:
Front Pullover Sequence (Beat to Front Pullover, Front Balance, Catcher's Hang)
Beats to get hands apart (since they will be together coming out of the Catcher's Hang)
Split Under the Bar
1 Knee Hang
Free leg around straight into 2 knee hang
L-Up
Free Handed Hammock
Pull Up to Squat
Double Arm Flag
Sit and Style (seated sideways)
Shoulder Stand
Straddle Back Balance
Angel Sequence (angel, reverse angel, 4 hang, ankle hang)
Transition to stand (perhaps do standing split?)
Forward Roll
Ladybug

Some of the major concerns that I have about my routine are as follows:
1. I'm not sure about after the catcher's hang, doing the beats (swinging), while moving my hands apart so that I can go into the next trick. I'm not sure that will look graceful. So, I'll have to see about that one.
2. The Free Handed Hammock is difficult on the more narrow bar, since my back is longer than the bar. That's where I hurt my neck/shoulder so much. But, after the "bad" time, I tried again, and it was better, so perhaps it will work out fine.
3. I still haven't actually done the shoulder stand trick yet, so hopefully that one will work for me. That will be the first thing I learn next week.
4. Will I have enough stamina to be able to do this entire routine, especially with the Ladybug at the end? (That's the trick where I'm curled up in a ball, holding on with 1 hand.)

Luckily, I still have several months to keep gaining strength. Already in just the past 2 weeks, I've seen dramatic improvement. Between additional strength and losing the remaining extra weight, hopefully it will be enough to allow myself to do this routine. I might change my running strategy from long sustained runs to high intensity intervals of 5 minutes in length (with recovery breaks in between). If I can train my body to expend tremendous amounts of energy over a 5 minute period, perhaps this will help me build the necessary stamina to make it through my routine. So, instead of running at 6.5mph for almost 30 minutes, I can start running at 7mph - 8mph and perhaps beyond in 5 minute intervals, and then have 2-3 minutes of recovery at maybe 5mph.

Also, there are 3 weeks where we're going to be on break from trapeze class - Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. I'm thinking of trying to schedule a private lesson somewhere between Christmas and New Year's, since 2 full weeks off is a lot, especially so close to the performance. If I can get in an hour private lesson the last week in December, I think that would be very helpful.

This weekend, I'll be on costume patrol. I might have found one already online. It's hard, though, since I can't try it on. Plus, I don't think I can return it if it doesn't fit. So, that's a tough one.