Workout Progress

I am amusingly bad at Dance Dance Revolution.

I've mentioned earlier that the first time I played this thing, I failed the "beginner" level.  Which does heaps for one's confidence -- seeing that great big red "FAILED" followed by "GAME OVER."

Eventually, I managed to pass a song at "beginner."  At that time, the screen gave me what looked like a stylized "O."  Couldn't figure out what it meant.  Wasn't until a few days later when I actually managed to get a "C" that I realized these were letter grades.  My "O" was actually a "D."

Hey, good enough, right?

(If you ever find yourself taking the Bar Exam, the mantra taught by several Bar Review courses is "Aim for a D.")

After having been at this for a couple of weeks, I've figured out a bit more than the letter grades.  What matters isn't so much whether I pick a song at the "Beginner" or "Basic" level, what matters is how many little "Difficulty" bars the song has in any particular level.  Because there's a RANGE, see.

After I managed my first B, and even my first A (hooray!) in songs with a single difficulty bar, I got all bold, and told the game to just give me any old random song at the Beginner level.  And I did quite well at this, until it randomly gave me a song that happened to have two bars, although at the beginner level.

Scared the crap out of me.  Them little arrows were running up the screen mighty fast.  But, to my great surprise (and joy), I actually passed it.  With a C!

And something else happened too.  My endurance was slowly improving.  Whereas, when I'd started, I could barely make it through two songs at level 1 without stopping for water, I could now do three songs at level 1 without breaking a sweat.

My daily routine is now 3 level 1 songs to warm up, then 3 level 2 songs.

I did this today.

(I love how it asks, "Are You Ready?" at the beginning of each song.  I take a deep breath and raise my arm up in the air like I'm an Olympic gymnast giving the OK before my routine -- as though I'm about to do something substantially more difficult than tromp around like Frankenstein's monster while a machine cheerfully grades every step I take.)

And after 3 level 2 songs, I wasn't sufficiently worked out, so that I'd do 3 more.  Here's the problem:  I've run out of level 2 songs.  So I thought I'd get the ol' heart pumping with a level 3 song.

.... Interesting factoid for them unfamiliar with DDR.  At levels 1 and 2, you can get by with moving your feet back to the center after each step.  There's no time for that at level 3 -- once you step on an arrow, you just leave your foot there until you need it again.  Which will generally be fairly soon.  This is considerably more difficult than the first two levels and a hell of a bigger workout.  Now, I went for the water bottle.

I actually managed a C on a level 3 song, then I hit one that I failed.  I tried a couple others and passed them (more C's!) and went to get a scrunchie so I could put my now sweaty hair up before the last song.

I came back to DDR to find my cat sitting on the mat.

And another song was about to start.  She'd actually put her paw on the square you have to hit to select a song.

She'd selected that song I failed before.

I failed it again.

Clearly, I have a new workout goal.