Bring on the DOMS

Stop sniggering at the back. And erase from your mind images of buxom ladies clad in Lycra or leather or rubber or PVC, wearing stockings and wielding a whip. They're not the doms I'm talking about.

This is Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, the poorly understood phenomenon of muscles aching 24-48 hours after exercise. I expect to be in for a dose of DOMS on Sunday. I have finally joined a gym 2 blocks up the road from here. I spent an hour and a half in there this afternoon, my first time in a gym in about 2 months. So I tried to take it a bit easy, but being a competitive sort of person probably did more than was wise under the circumstances. Going back again tomorrow and doing some more exercise might alleviate or even prevent the DOMS but if not I'm going to be sore on Sunday.

To anyone thinking “but you tango every night, that's exercise” I have to say tango doesn't meet my definition of exercise. It doesn't get my heart rate up above 120bpm, doesn't get my pulse that high for at least an hour, and doesn't get me out of breath. Similarly west coast swing doesn't count as exercise in my book. Modern jive (some call it ceroc) fits the bill, but so far as I can tell that's not on offer in Buenos Aires (and nor is west coast swing). If you happen to know anywhere I can dance west coast swing or modern jive in Buenos Aires do please let me know.

I'm still being very lazy during the days: getting up late, faffing about on-line and wasting time. A good friend says that's OK, I'm allowed 6 weeks of laziness before being ready to get on with stuff. Progress on learning Spanish/Castellano is almost non-existent. That promised blog post entirely in Castellano is going to be a very short one at this rate.

Oh well, one step at a time. The gym is a good start.

For those keeping count, and for me in a few months time when I'll have forgotten, my tango inventory since the last blog post is:

• Tuesday afternoon        - Group class at Caserón Porteño
• Tuesday night               - Porteño y Bailarín
• Wednesday night          - Sueño Porteño
• Thursday afternoon       - Private lesson with Maya
• Thursday night              - Niño Bien

There are a few new photos in the milongas set at Flickr.

I had planned to go to El Beso tonight. El Beso is a traditional milonga in a rather small venue. If you're not there when the doors open, or you don't have a reservation then you might not get in. Since I've adapted rather well to Argentinian time keeping I thought I'd call and make a reservation. It turned out to be a good thing to do. El Beso no longer runs on Friday nights. It still appears in some of the milonga listings, including the one I refer to every day.

It's a bank holiday weekend back at home in the UK. Traditionally that means bad weather, and indeed the forecast is not good. I hope the weathermen are being their usual hopeless selves(*) and the weather turns out to be uncharacteristically good. If you're planning a barbeque I hope it goes well. And if you're dancing somewhere, sometime, have a great time.


*Honestly, in what other profession can you get it wrong almost every single day of the week and still have a job at the end of the month?