My fitness regime has been on and off for a few years now, so it's more of a crumbling infrastructure, with expelled diplomats and hyperinflation than a regime. However, as Daisy is away, I wanted to increase my 'core strength' for the next theatre tour and generally improve the look, not to mention the stamina, of my body.
For the last two weeks I have been very active in the morning and the evening, sit ups, press ups, lifts with weights and an early morning jog around the base. Living on an old RAF base means that there are lots of straight roads with which to throw myself up and down, the relative isolation away from a main road means at half five in the morning, all is still. I believe today I hit the wall. Adorned as usual in my karrimor hiking top and cycling shorts, I bopped down the road on my 'fwams' ~ the name for my large white nike air trainers that I own; wearing them, I feel like the Michelin man or Mr. Soft...and 'fwam' is the sound they make in my head.
My joints became lead and my heart pounded in my chest. I powered on however but I admit, the power wasn't there this morning. I finally staggered back to the house, joints burning and solid, head swimming and a feeling sweeping my senses akin to standing up too quickly after smoking a joint. In short, I was buggered. I spent the next twenty minutes gasping for breath, collapsed on the sofa. Even Millie, my kitten, stayed at the living room door, eyeing me as if I was some dying sea creature. The wall.
Even now, an hour later, I feel as if I have recently recovered from some major surgery. Maybe I'm not meant to be fit and the horrid pear shaped torso I am developing is simply nature's plan for me. Maybe I should stick to the wholly successful development of my mind, through reading and writing. But then I catch a sight of my podge, my borderline moobs and the rolls of skin when I sit down...I am determined to get rid of those at least. Daisy thinks that this exercise is a good thing. She is twenty six and a size 6. I'm not so shallow to think that unless I get ripped like Hugh Jackman I will lose her beautiful self, but I think she would appreciate a boyfriend who needs a belt for his trousers, as opposed to a paunch sitting like an outcrop of proud headland.
Walls can be scaled after all.
