Okay, let’s be honest – this question is surely an oxymoron. Fun and exercise in the same sentence? Really? Is it just me who thinks like this or are there others?
Exercise is the bane of my life! I know we should do it, I know once I’ve done it I feel like a superhero…but doing it? Oh my God, no! I can’t tell you how much my monkey mind goes into a chattering meltdown while I’m exercising. It’s screaming at me “what are you doing, you hate this?” over and over again while my body is kind of agreeing with it. Some of us are born to be good at exercising, and some of us are born to be good with cake on the sofa reading a book. I am definitely the latter, but I need to be more of the former because of the latter. It is totally a vicious cycle!
One of the problems I have while exercising, especially if I am doing it in a group with people I know, is that I find the whole process really funny. I mean, I have no sense of rhythm, I am no born dancer believe me. When you do those online exercise routines where you have to move your feet and arms at different times, I have to concentrate really hard on what the instructor is doing because it confuses me. And I practically tie my legs together because I have gotten it so wrong, the only thing I can do is laugh. Which in real life exercise classes has gotten me into trouble a time or two. My Mum and I tried yoga once at our local gym. I deliberately didn’t look at her because I knew I would end up laughing, partly because the contortions are just a bit unnatural the first time you’re doing it, and it was the first time for us. That was until, I’ll put this gently, the woman next to me passed wind. Loudly. Now, I have a toilet sense of humour and so does my Mum and I made the mistake of looking at her. Once I started laughing that was it, I couldn’t stop. I’m typing this, laughing at the memory. At the end of the lesson, we were pulled aside by the instructor and told that if we could not respect the sanctity of the yogic experience, it might be wise not to attend again. We didn’t. Another time, I had a couple of friends over to our makeshift ‘gym’ in our conservatory which involved a set of weights, a yoga mat, a table and a laptop tuned into YouTube exercise videos. They laughed at my sheer lack of coordination. A lot. They laughed as I missed an entire exercise trying to work out what the hell I was supposed to be doing with my legs and arms. And they laughed as I tripped over the yoga mat. I can honestly say that in all the days and weeks we did this I don’t think I toned up much at all mostly because I was just trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing rather than doing it.
When I went horse riding, I was sometimes such a disaster even the horse looked at me with disdain. The time I was dismounting and, as I’m short, I needed a step. I couldn’t find it, ended up on the ground on my backside. I swear the horse rolled his eyes at me. The time we were hacking through the forest, the horse decided he fancied a bit of a gallop and in the process somehow both my riding boots fell off leaving my feet dangling and me hanging onto the reins as I desperately tried to remain on the horse. I changed horse one time and she kept on stopping abruptly so she could eat the trees and bushes along the route, only by some miracle did I stop from catapulting over her head. Then there was the time we went on a pub hack, and my horse decided to drink a stranger’s pint while I was distracted. By the time we had reached the pub, I could barely walk straight because it had been a long ride on a big horse, and I had to ride back on what I hoped wasn’t going to be a drunk horse.
Cycling isn’t much better for me, either. I used to live in Newcastle for work and decided to buy a bicycle to improve my fitness levels. After work, I would cycle around Jesmond and it was all pretty tame and reasonably successful (other than carrying the damn thing up the stairs to my flat, didn’t think about that) but the purchasing of the bicycle had been embarrassing. Again, being short came into play here. I went to the shop to buy the bicycle, tried out on the adult ones to find that they were basically too big for me. So, the shop assistant shouted to his colleague on the other side of the shop that he needed to help me with the children’s bicycles because I was too short for an adult one. I was mortified! I took it home with me on a visit one weekend and decided on the Sunday morning to go for a ride. I got ambitious, ended up miles away from home with no phone, no water, and no money on a freakishly warm April day. So, I had to cycle back on thighs that were burning from the effort (there are more steep inclines in East London than you’d think) and a backside that felt as though it had been beaten with a wooden plank multiple times. Then I had to drive back to Newcastle like it. At least I didn’t fall off as I did with my more recent cycling attempts. Refusing this time to countenance the horror of a children’s bicycle when I was with my child buying one, I purchased a woman’s bicycle without properly trying it. Needless to say, and much to my husband’s amusement, it was too big for me and even lowering the seat to its lowest setting didn’t help. We had to take the seat out, saw off some of the pole it sits on and reinstate it. And it’s still too big really, my feet cannot touch the ground on it. I have fallen off it a number of times. Once while we were on holiday in Norfolk where we had taken all of our bicycles with the intention of cycling around a lot during the week, I kind of just did this collapse thing. I was astride the bicycle, unable to touch the ground, and I am not sure really what happened just that I found myself falling sideways to the ground in what I like to think was a graceful fall but judging by my husband and son’s laughter, was just ridiculous. Don’t even get me started on the gears on the bicycle which I never really figured out. Suffice to say, my bicycle remains in the garage where we are safe from each other.
Running. Oh, the falls. Where I used to run there was an artificial hill (made up of the excess soil from a nearby housing estate build) which from the side most open to the public’s view was very well manicured. It had been raining so there was a lot of mud on the ground, but I felt confident as I ran up the public side of the hill, shall we say. Unfortunately, I decided to run down the non-public side which wasn’t so well manicured and was basically a mud bath. I was on the phone at the time…I know, I know, utterly ridiculous but in my defence I was trying to figure out where my personal trainer was…and I wasn’t really paying attention to what I was doing. I was also with the dogs so was keeping an eye out for them too. And I fell. I mean, I didn’t just fall, I slipped down the entire side of the hill. Through the mud, all the way down on my backside. I was covered in mud and who knows what else. I swear even my dogs laughed at me. My trainer at the other end of the phone was asking what on earth was going on because he heard me yelp but my phone was now covered in mud. I might have fallen on the non-public side of the hill but I emerged looking like a creature from the black lagoon so no one could have been in any doubt as to what had happened. Of course, the place was packed that day wasn’t it? It couldn’t have been a slow Monday. No, it had to be a busy Saturday it happened on. I have tripped over roots in the fields a lot, I have got caught in potholes in the road (I live in the countryside, there are no pavements here) and grazed my knees like a child, even sitting by the side of the road at 5.15am crying because of the grazed knees. I can feel the mortification as I type this. You would think that a treadmill would be safe, wouldn’t you? Think again. I have this inability to walk or run in a straight line so what tends to happen is that I keep wandering over to the sides of the treadmill. If the handrails weren’t there, I would fall off I have no doubt about that.
Swimming is reasonably safe, I guess, except I don’t like my head going under the water. I had a nasty incident in a swimming pool as a child where the instructor dropped me in the deep end, and I’ve never liked my head going under water ever since. And, frankly, I’m not very good at it. My breaststroke is appalling, and my freestyle is just that. A free style that bears no resemblance to proper swimming. So, the only time I will swim is if I’m not surrounded by lots of people. Which, let’s face it, is never because we don’t have our own pool. So, it’s not an option because it isn’t really an exercise for me except for one of real torture.
I am not built for exercise, unlike a friend of mine who once ran the New York Marathon with barely any training though she did used to play semi-professional football religiously. She completed it but admitted that it was a ‘bit difficult’. I once ran a 10k race and seriously thought I was going to die. And yet, I have written characters in my book who run every day which I think tells you what is, deep down, my favourite exercise. I am equally terrible at it as I am all other forms of exercise but it is the one that gives me a huge sense of achievement when I have finished. I’m out in nature when I do it (the treadmill disaster potential is real), and I can either listen to the birds sing or to a podcast, book or music in relative peace. Yes, my brain is going ‘nooooo’ while I do it, I do it alone because I generally can’t speak whilst I’m doing it, but if there was any exercise that’s fun for me, running is it.
I’ve just realised this post is going out on 1st April. Trust me, all of the above is true and no April Fool’s joke unfortunately!
I have set myself a challenge for the new astrological year – to run a mile a day, every day. I will let you know how I get on!
Louisa Simpson 