Pilates up close and personal

I had my first private Pilates lesson tonight. (Every time I say the words "private Pilates lesson," it still cracks me up. Never in my life did I imagine I would go for such a thing!) I already knew the instructor Kim from her days as our group instructor, but now I was going to the studio she has at her home about a half-hour's drive out into the country.

It was a glorious afternoon and I thoroughly enjoyed the drive down. No sooner had I found the right address, pulled in, and shut off the car that I turned and saw the bottoms of four paws, two shiny black noses, and two bright faces with big pink tongues at my driver's side window. Kim's dogs were a great welcoming committee!

The studio was not huge, but certainly big enough, and two windows offered lovely views of the countryside. One whole side of the room was taken up by a very interesting piece of equipment. It's called a reformer, and it looks like a medieval instrument of torture. It is reminiscent of a bed frame with various springs and things running lengthwise underneath it, along with footrests, shoulder blocks, and a headrest. The part where your torso goes (the carriage) can slide back and forth to accommodate whatever exercise you're doing. After a few warm-up exercises on the mat, Kim asked me to lay down on the reformer with bent legs and push straight back (away from my feet) against the shoulder blocks until my knees were straight. This was not easy because there was plenty of resistance from the springs. I did various exercises with my legs, and then Kim handed me these grips and pulleys to do arm exercises with. It was hard to remember everything all at once sometimes, but I did pretty well.

The most important running-related thing I learned was about my hamstring. I knew that the hamstring has a point of insertion more or less at your butt, but it also has three heads (the other end has to attach somewhere too, of course!) that all insert at the side of the knee. Guess what? Mine were all extremely tight. If Kim put any pressure on them at all while I was doing the hamstring stretches she showed me, it hurt like crazy. She warned me that the stretch I had been doing before was only stretching the butt end, not the knee end, and this was why they were so tight. She loaned me a thera-band (a resistance band--like a big rubber band) and showed me how to stretch out the knee end of my hamstrings. I promised I would do the new exercise after my eight-miler tomorrow morning. Tight hamstrings are bad, bad juju for runners and can lead to all sorts of other problems. She said I needed to work on lower-body flexibility and upper-body strength (not exactly surprising!).

I have to be at the trailhead to meet Lindsey at 8:00 tomorrow morning, so I'd better get to bed and get my beauty rest! (As I left, Kim told me, "Make a note of where you're sore tomorrow." Not "if you're sore," but "where you're sore.") Tomorrow could be a very interesting day...