Have you ever jumped out of an airplane or found yourself headed down a double black diamond slope at Killington Vermont? Have you ever felt that kind of pure terror? That was my thought process just as Michelle spied me in position #3 and with a laser like look she said: Relax Jack! Because my shoulders were tighter than the skins on Gene Krupa’s drums. I was tight because I felt like I was in a pitched battle trying to catch my breath racing in The Corso Zone.
Michelle Corso pulsates to a different drummer and you can see it in her approach, as it is predicated on that she is amongst us rather than leading us. It is such an unusual dynamic that you have to experience for yourself as it is unlike any of the other instructors at Equinox. And because she is so passionate about her craft, you feel compelled not to disappoint her and give nothing less than maximum effort. There were several times during the power intervals that I reached down and grabbed my will power from my marathon days to crank up just a little extra.
Today she had me so far up on the resistance dial, if I turned it a smidgeon more my pedal stroke would have been frozen. Needless to say, that by the half way point I was nearly drowning in the anaerobic zone. I could barely breathe and reverse peristalsis was threatening to rear it’s ugly head. I haven’t felt that way since a 20 mile run in Central Park back in the mid 70’s.
I talked with two riders after the class by the stretch mats, and one exclaimed that she couldn’t understand why Michelle’s class wasn’t filled. Instantaneously I said it’s because the class is too hard. Plain and simple The Corso Zone is not for the faint of heart and breath. There are absolutely no breaks, you grab water on the fly and you hope, you hope you make it through in one piece. As I walked out I felt like I had a case of the bends. I needed to decompress because I came up from the deep too quickly. I challenge you to take Ms. Puccia-Corso’s class next time it comes around on the schedule. I challenge you because you have to have a ferocious like commitment, to make it through The Corso Zone.
This sounds intense.
ReplyDeleteI hope that I have captured exactly that. She is most extraordinary this Michelle Corso. She not only looks like a physical specimen from a textbook of the human anatomy but she lives it as well. There is no finer athlete than she. And now that I took a ride in the mountains with Tripp, I appreciate what the Corso Zone is starting to become for me.
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