Exercise for pleasure and profit

The other night Laura persuaded me to sign up for Race for Life. That is unfair because she didn't so much persuade me as ask me when I was bit tired and therefore have lost all sense of what was sane. Not that Race for Life is exactly a marathon or anything, I know it's only a 5k for charity and it's acceptable to walk if you need to, but it has reminded me how little I run or take any exercise at all now. I wrote this in August, about how I was finally beginning to get the point of exercise and how it can be a joyful and fulfilling part of life. Yea… I lost sight of that quite quickly.

In light of the Race for Life I am determined to rediscover the joy of exercise that I had found for a week or so when I wrote that post.

Another development since I wrote that post is that there is a fair bit more than me now than there as then. The main way I know this is that stretch marks have appeared on my belly. I have never before had stretch marks on my belly. I have had them on every other fleshy part of me since I was about 13 but I had managed to avoid any belly ones somehow. The appearance of these purple stripes on my belly shows that a year where I've eaten around 50 lasagnes and drunk a hell of a lot of red wine has taken its toll. I've never been obsessed with being thin, I don't think that being thin is the end goal of life. But I don't feel like I'm at optimum me. The extra me that is causing the stretch marks is just sitting there as a reminder that I have lost sight of my joyful exercise plans. I want to lose this extra plodge as a side-effect of becoming more active and healthy, not as the goal of it.

MY GOALS:

2/3 runs per week

/a> I'm going to start with C25K again and actually finish this time!! Before I just kind of went for random runs and ignored the C25K program. I tend to go for a run first thing on a Saturday morning because there are less people about but when I go to my local park I find that the few people who are around are random old men who are out at 8 o'clock on a Saturday morning for no discernible reason. They have no dog and no obvious purpose except to freak me out and watch me as I jog red-faced around the park trying to avoid eye contact with strangers. I have realised the way to avoid these weirdos and annoying dog walkers is to run along quiet residential streets when everyone who lives in the houses is asleep and there is no one walking for leisure. I just need my trainers and Pulp on my itunes.

1/2 swimming sessions per week
I like swimming because you are too busy not drowning to care about anyone else (this is if you are swimming proper laps) and, despite the skin-tight outfit, your body is largely obscured by the water so no one can see your tits jiggling. I need to actually join the gym I've been planning to join for over a year now. We can get a really good deal for the basic council gym through work (guess where I work) and I've still not got my bum down there and joined. Once I have I shall be swimming all the time and basically become a fish. In my mind I think that swimming is good complimentary exercise for running. I think I've made this up.

Try to get my fitbit up to at least 4 dots most days.
This will mean that my life is not completely sedentary and hopefully means I will get a bit less flabby. Wearing a fitbit really makes you aware of how much (or how little) you move. This is quite depressing for someone like me who has in a 2 or 3 minute walk to catch a bus which stops bang outside their destination. I can almost see my bus home from my desk. I am challenging myself to get off the bus stop 1 stop early morning and night just so that I get 5 or so extra minutes of activity each time. So far this has not really happened but I really need to start taking responsibility for myself as an adult human person!

Recent things I have read about exercise - Laura herself and this

I think I'm starting to 'get' exercise...

I was going to start this by going, "like most women, I have a complicated relationship with exercise…" but this is complete bollocks. I don't have a complicated relationship with exercise, I have a simple one. I hate it. I have always hated it. I have written off Sport Aid as being for boring people who couldn't do Comic Relief. I think that pretty much sums up my attitude to exercise for a long time – it was there for the people who weren't good at other stuff to have something that was theirs. This is all the fault of PE.

It has taken years to learn the difference between humiliating and badly taught PE, and life affirming, enjoyable exercise. It's taken until now, at the age of 25 when I haven't done PE for 9 years, for me to have friends who are are getting into exercise and for me to consider it worthwhile thing to do.

I think my problem with PE is that it is all so public. Everyone can see you struggle because it is all there for them and not hidden in an exercise book. Even now I remember the cheek-burning embarrassment of being unable to climb out of the swimming pool without the steps while my whole class watched and waited. Why was this a thing we were made to do? It was completely unnecessary and felt like some strange punishment. The worst part was that I could actually do it! I just lost confidence when everyone was watching me. I can't imagine what the point of that was? In case I found myself in a swimming pool without steps? I just wouldn't get into one without steps. 

No one knows what PE is even for. Is it so that you can learn how to do lots of different sports and athletic events? If so the only sport I got good at was sitting on same grass, anxiously waiting for my next turn.  Is for health? I can't see how 1 hour a week of half-hearted exercise is really going to do any benefit. Is it to instil a love of pushing your body, living in the moment and feeling strong and alive with every fibre of your being? I don't think anyone has ever felt like that from being forced to play team sports without ever being taught the rules. It seems like everyone thinks that PE should happen but no one really knows what it is for. What does "Physical education" even mean?

All I ever learned from PE is not to try so it doesn't matter when I fail. 

Then came the idea of exercise as the way to be thin and beautiful. But not too much exercise, that would be weird and make you too muscled and manly. You aren't supposed to enjoy it either, you are supposed to endure it for the results. For a long time that's what I believed it was about. Either you exercise to get thin or you play a sport because you are good at it. I believed that enjoyment with sport only come with being extremely talented, and for the majority it was to be avoided or endured. I had absolutely no experience of exercise being enjoyable for its own sake. Just the word reminded me of the creeping, prickling heat of embarrassment that came with PE*

But then I started to read about people enjoying exercise for its own sake, because it made them feel strong. Not exercise to get thin or to be an athlete, but exercise because of how it feels to do it. Because it reminds you that you are a human and you are alive and that you are in your body, and all the parts of you that you neglect are as much part of you as your imagination or your sense of humour. Think of the all the sensations you are losing if you just focus on your mind. You may not be the best runner, but that doesn't stop you having a go. You don't stop singing in the shower because you'll never be Dolly Parton.

It has taken me 9 years, but I am finally getting to the point where I'm beginning to feel that my body is part of me, not just the fleshy frame that carries around my brain. To be fully alive I need to use it. I need to run and walk and swim and see what I can do. I like feeling tired from doing something. I want to be one of those people who goes for a run whenever they have a problem. 

* You may think I am being over the top about my hatred of PE but I'm really not. One year I felt sick through every single geography lesson because I had PE immediately afterwards. I never once sat in that room without feeling slightly sick.

Swimming Tips

This is exactly what I look like when I swim

Source: dustjacketattic.blogspot.com via Frances on Pinterest

A few months ago I foolishly agreed to go swimming with mum a few times a week. This means getting up at 6 two or three times a week and stumbling about like a drunk. 

Here is what I've learned:

Don’t assess your leg stubble at 6am when you have no glasses on. You can’t see, but this doesn’t mean no one else can. 

Sometimes the water is so cold that you actually have to swim. This morning I was hoping to float a bit and try not to drown from falling asleep, but the water was so cold I was forced to swim properly. 

Boobs make you surprisingly buoyant. I can’t swim along the bottom anymore because my boobs mean I float back to the surface. :(

No, I don’t know how that old man can swim so fast on his side. Is swimming on your side even a thing?

Always lie about how many lengths you’ve done. I usually add about 5 to the final total.