Impact boxing!

Leaving the Talisman Center was an experience in itself. It was lightly raining, slightly windy and we were in soaked street clothes (who knew we should have brought a towel.....I mean it's not like we got one at the pool lol). Steve and I decided that it's only about 14 blocks to the next clue location, so we may as well walk it. Waiting for the last train took way too long!

It was all great for the first few blocks. We were wet and it was raining. No big deal! That was.....until the chaffing started. By the time we got to the boxing clue, my inner thighs were brutally raw. It was like I had taken fine grit sandpaper to them for the duration of the walk. (I think Steve was bad as well. I didn't really want to ask how is inner thighs were though). So now my thighs were burning and my shins were like hot needles were being shoved through them. Then we arrived at Impact Boxing........

Welcome to boot camp!!!!

From the moment we took the stairs down to where the ring was, someone was enthusiastically yelling at us.

"DROP YOUR GEAR!!!!"

"GET YOUR HEAD GEAR ON!!!!"

"GROIN PROTECTOR ON!!!!"

"BOXING GLOVES ON!!!!"

"MOVE IT, MOVE IT, MOVE IT!!!!"

Now, if you have never seen any of the equipment mentioned, here's what they look like:

So nice and sweaty as we weren't the first to use them

Ever try to put the second one on by yourself......you want to use your teeth but there is a definate eeww factor there

Keep in mind that these are not as one size fits all as they say they are.......voice octave changes are very likely!

So once we had our gear on, we were sent to see the lady in charge of the skipping section. It's only for a minute, grab one of the skipping ropes.......what they dont tell you is that the ropes are color coded for length. Steve and I both felt like we were using my daughters skipping rope they were so short.  To top that off, the lady running this tells us that the minute is based on her judgement how well we were doing at that moment. She kept threatening to start us over if we didn't pick up the pace!

So once we managed to do 4 minutes of our one minute of skipping, we got sent over to the heavy bag.

He we are supposed to follow the instructions of the girl running this section. She tells us that we are to hit light or hard for a minute, depending on her instructions. So she starts off with hard. 10 seconds later she tells us to hit soft. Another 10 seconds and we are back to hard..........and this is where she forgot about us.

Another group of chasers had made it to this station and she proceeded to give them instructions, leaving us to hit the bag with all our strength for close to what seemed like 20 minutes (it was only really closer to 2 minutes, but felt waaaay longer).

From here we were sent on to the speed bag.

There was no Rocky moment with these things. The movies make it look so easy hitting a speed bag with rhythm. I think in the minute we were supposed to hit the bag, Steve and I connected 10 times combined.

Then we were at the last station. Keep in mind that the volunteers at the challenge were yelling at us boot camp style the whole time. The last thing we had to do was hit a tethered bag......how hard could it be.

Looks easy when you are a pro.......we weren't even amateurs. I think I threw my back out trying to hit this thing once it started moving. I was able to build up a rhythm on this once I figured out how it was going to move. Steve......not so much. This challenge nearly put him down for the 10 count.

Once we got out of the sweaty boxing gear (again...eeewww), we were off to Dog City Day Care....