The things we do

 I have signed up for boot camp. This is wholeheartedly out of character for 3 main reasons.

1.       I do not like being told what to do.

2.       I do not like being shouted at.

3.       I do not agree with group punishment.

And group punishment this is. We assemble in a local park. White van men yell helpful encouragement such as ‘left-right-left right’ through their windows as they drive past. We run, squat, lunge and burpee – all hideously painful torture techniques designed to make women realise that the perfect body is definitely not worth this level of effort.

We leap up and down. I watch women’s bottoms wobble furiously and jump higher. Because it is damp, we are inadvertently ‘bringing up the worms’ in a kind of mad exercise worm -dance.

We must now ‘drop and give him 20.’ I am horrified that I am paying good money to be given this kind of instruction, but not quite as horrified as when I find I have my hands and face in wormy wet grass.

I am now rolling around in mud. Actually rolling - as I do a press up, and then flail around on the ground until repeating. My hoodie has grass stains on the elbows. I am inhaling grass and wondering if we have any Vanish stain remover left under the sink.

Oh shit, I’m going to be sick.

That would be really embarrassing. Luckily someone has already thrown up by the tree. But she is hard-core and has now resumed the jumping squat. I would have to go home, and never return.

I am not sick.

I do not like burpees. No-one has ever looked back on their life and thought ‘I wish I’d done more burpees.’ I think wars might have started over enforced burpees.

And then it is over. I limp home – damp, yet victorious.

I walk in the flat and am so hungry that I eat an entire lump of cheese straight out the fridge. I have walked wet muddy grass all over the carpet and created a damp patch from my large wet bottom on the sofa.

If only I had energy left to clean.

Injured in action

I've sustained an injury.

If I told you that I’d sustained this on my first training run you wouldn’t believe me. You’d think I was making it up for a witty ‘silly old me’ blog post. The problem is that I’m not making it up.

I’ve done something to my foot. This does not sound too serious until you realise that the walking process relies heavily on really being able to put your full weight on your foot. If you do not do this, your knee develops an injury too.

By proxy I've hurt my knee.

And it was going so well. I ran 1.8 miles according to my Nike app. I say ‘ran’, I mean I survived. Ok, so I had to sit on a bench by the river for a couple of minutes after a mile, and yes I was somewhat thwarted by a stitch in my right side. And fine, I walked a bit. BUT, it was my first run and as I felt the bottom wobbling was under control, I had deemed it a success.

I should have known the next day I would be unable to walk, let alone run. 

This is not my first exercise related injury. I have a weak ankle after a mountaineering sprain. A dodgy knee from a previous attempt to run places. And I’ve never quite recovered psychologically after falling off a cliff whilst abseiling.

I should probably just stay at home. Safe and sound.

For now I’ll hobble off to see someone who knows what’s wrong with it, and will eat cake and curse the day I ever considered self-improvement.

Fair weather jogger

I have agreed to do something unthinkable.

I have signed up for a half marathon. This really is remarkably out of character, and the only reason I am writing about it is to ensure that I don’t shamelessly bail out. 

Dear reader, please do not think I am becoming one of ‘those’ people. You know the ones – they wax lyrical about how wonderful running makes them feel and use words like ‘free’ and ‘rush’ and ‘relaxed. I feel none of the above. I feel only sweaty, red in the face, and closer to death than I’d ordinarily like.

No I am not one of those people. I rarely feel the need to push myself, experience any kind of burn or commit to punishing schedules. In fact, now I am wondering how I can get out it - I do have an old knee injury come to think of it.

In January a friend announced that he was going to run the Great North Run this September. He has just emigrated to Australia. I wonder if I will go to similar lengths to avoid my ordeal?

Surprisingly this will not be my first race. A few years ago I ran a 10k. Well I say ran, jogged is a far more representative verb. Anyway, at the end of the run (no doubt due to endorphins and hysteria) I felt like I could have kept going. Please remember that it is very easy to say that you could have kept going once you are wrapped in tin foil and sipping lucozade. It is on this hunch, 3 years ago, that I ‘could have plodded on a little further’, that I have signed up to run 13 blooming miles.

This is a disaster.  

                            

I will be humiliated as my bottom wobbles in my joggers. I will become a running bore who is only able to talk about ‘distance tracking’. I will probably have to do a little more than download the Nike Plus app and buy a new running bra. But that can wait until tomorrow, I've made a start at least.

Crossing a line

I’ve done it.  All jokes aside about cancelling my gym membership, I’ve actually gone and cancelled my gym membership.


I have concluded that the gym is good for neither my bank balance or my health.

 I do not need a gym full of sweaty people to encourage me to lift things, and  whilst I will really miss the infinity pool, with the money I’ll be saving, I might even be able to afford the water rates in my own flat.

When I moved to Edinburgh I went on a ‘tour’ of gyms. One entirely hideous experience saw me visit ‘Curves Gym’ with absolutely no idea what I was letting myself in for. For those who are equally unaware, Curves is really more of a weight management club than a gym. And thus, ‘centre manager’ Claire – who appeared to require a fair amount of weight management herself – grunted incoherently at me while taking my measurements, before announcing that Curves could definitely do something about my ‘back fat’ and enquiring if my family and friends were supportive of my weight loss journey.

 Great. I’d walked into the gym thinking I was pretty much ok, and was walking out a broken (back fat sporting) woman.

 I told you gyms were bad for my health.

 Of course I’ve done the only sensible thing in light of my gym cancellation: I’ve ordered a Cross Trainer for the flat. Yes I will use it. No it will not become a clothes rail.

 The Boyfriend has promised that he will assemble it for me. Please don’t think I am not able, it’s just that I once spent an entire weekend assembling Ikea flat-pack furniture and I’m worried that the flash-backs alone might finish me off.

 So my cross trainer will be delivered on Thursday ready for a spot of resistance training. Let’s see what we can do about that back fat, eh.

Bikram can bugger off

I have just got home from a Body Pump class. As a result my hands have gone into solid claws from gripping the bar and I can barely type.

For anyone who has ever done a Body Pump class, you will understand. Others will no doubt be thinking this is a spot of melodrama for comic effect. Think again.

Body Pump is, to coin a phrase, pretty flipping evil. The correct term is endurance training, where participants, to the background of hard-house music, work all the major muscle groups via a series of weight-bearing exercises including squats, presses, lifts and curls.

I haven’t been to Body Pump in quite some time. Let me think. 3 years. The last time I went I was unable to drive my car home due to leg shake. I remembered this around 3 minutes into the class, but my path to the door was blocked by a knucklehead squatting. Tonight, after reacquainting myself with the ‘pump’, I was gaily walking home and hopped, with a skip of smugness, off the kerb. And my leg gave clean away.

Smooth.                                                                      

I have friends who partake in Bikram Yoga. For the unenlightened, this is yoga performed in a room heated like a sauna. Roasting hot and 40 per cent humidity. Why? God, why? A friend summarised Bikram Yoga to me, saying, ‘Putting aside the mental pious vegetarian stick insects and the fact it’s massively overpriced – it’s amazing, and will change your life forever.’

Well that’s me sold.

I mean do we really loathe ourselves this much? From StairMasters to kettlebells, Rosemary Conley to Natalie Cassidy, we understand and expect that getting in shape is going to require serious effort on our part. But we pump, pose, zumba, shimmy and now even part-cook ourselves under the loose heading of ‘exercise.’ I fell flat on my face in the street this evening thanks to squats. Is it worth it? Is it really?

I mean you can’t blame us. If I hear one more of the most beautiful women in the world, size zero, preened to within an inch of her life, tell me that ‘she’s just like everyone else and hates her tummy too,’ I am going to go to Hollywood and force feed her Ginsters Pies.

I can’t listen to one more starlet complain about her body.  Cheryl Cole says she has big bum days too. Oh spare me, that woman does not need magic pants. Angelina Jolie herself has moaned that she feels her lips ‘take over her face’. 

Do these women think it's endearing to complain about their appearance? If they put themselves in our size 12 jeans, they would understand that it just makes us want to smack them in their perfect little faces.

A survey by American Glamour magazine found that 97 per cent of readers had negative thoughts about their body every day. I wasn’t surprised, but I’d quite like to be in the other 3 per cent. Every day is a lot of time to commit, life is short.

So for now I will be resting my exhausted (and utterly seizing up) size 12 self, slapping my cellulite with enthusiasm and rejoicing that wobbly bits or not, at least my lips aren’t too big for my face.