When I was about 3-years-old I took my first ballet class. I still remember being on the stage for the first time as my class’s recital song was “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” and our costumes were pajamas with sparkles and glitter on them. I continued to dance for many years and have also done tap, jazz and Irish. I always stuck with ballet though.

I took a three year break from dance when I did cheerleading, but I went right back to ballet afterwards. Once I started taking Advanced Placement classes in high school I no longer had time to do dance class, but I always kept up with it on my own.

During college, the gym had Barre classes that I would do or I would watch videos on YouTube of dancers who record ballet classes. Now that I’m getting into a routine with work, I’ve picked up doing the YouTube classes again whenever I have some free time.

I hadn’t done any of them in a few months and decided to do two of them on Sunday after I went on an almost two mile walk that morning. I pulled out my barre and put on my brand new ballet slippers that I bought for when I workout. It was absolutely amazing putting those on.

I’ve done ballet workouts in socks before and it’s just not even close to the same as doing them in ballet slippers. That’s probably why I decided to really push myself and do two ballet workouts. I was having so much fun doing them that I didn’t realize how much pain I was in until I had to do another grand plie and I could hardly stand back up.

I woke up on Monday and my legs felt like jello. I skipped my morning walk that day as I could hardly even walk the five minutes it takes me to get to work.

After not doing the classes for a while, I had forgotten how much doing plies, grand plies and releves hurt the leg muscles. There were also a lot of various fondue combinations involved in the two classes.

I think I stretched at least four times on Monday. Stretching has always been very relaxing for me as I normally sit on the floor in some sort of a stretch while watching TV. It also greatly helps the pain that is my right knee.

I really should be stretching more often and the amount of pain my legs were in on Monday definitely showed me that. I was able to go on my morning walk on Tuesday, but I only did .75 of a mile as I didn’t want to completely overdo it since my legs were still a little sore.

I’m tempted to take it easy the rest of the week, but I see my ballet slippers as soon as I walk into my house which makes me want to do another workout. At least I’m enjoying working out again instead of dreading it.

I think all I really needed was to put on those ballet slippers again. It has made me love ballet all over again and realize how much I truly missed it.

Caitie Ihrig