I'm still waiting to hear about this temp role, and as I have been discussing it ad nauseum with my housemates, and getting increasingly agitated while doing so (Agency Witch X is certainly living up to her title), I have decided not to go into a no-holds barred rant on my blog, as all it will do is make me more annoyed. Positive thinking people!
So instead, I will muse about a good thing that has happened to me lately - my written version of an evil eye charm. Recently I have become more motivated to go to the gym regularly. Not only do I keep a relatively disciplined schedule, but I almost – ALMOST – enjoy it! Ok, that’s a bit strong…. I no longer loathe it with every shrieking fibre in my body. For those of you who know me well, don’t fear; I have not been struck by a mysterious illness, and neither have I been abducted by aliens. The source of this new-found motivation is, surprisingly, the boyfriend.
Let me back track a little here, so you can see why this development is so noteworthy. I do not like exercise. Not as in, oh, I don’t really feel like running my daily 10km this morning, but I’ll do it because I’m a health freak kind of way – as in, I abhor, detest, am appalled by the idea of getting off my ass and working myself into a stinky, wheezing, jelly-legged lump, when the alternative is SO much more appealing. I am a born couch potato; I relish sprawling in front of the TV, or, if it’s summer, outside with a good book and lots of suntan lotion – I’m not usually found enthusiastically throwing a Frisbee on the shoreline. In school, I was the kid who couldn’t – the one who was picked near-to-last for girls P.E. softball; the one who did ‘social’ tennis and ‘D team’ hockey (which was only called that so we didn’t feel like complete knobs – we never played an actual match) and then only because it was compulsory; the one whose hand-eye co-ordination was, and still is, so bad that if you throw a set a keys at me on my way out the door, I am likely to flap like an albatross.
The one sport I thoroughly enjoyed and was always motivated to practice was gymnastics. I did it from age 10 through 14, and I got my Western Province colours – possibly the only school-recognized sporting achievement of my life. I think the reason I loved it so much was because I could make my body do things that the other kids couldn’t do – a stark contrast to how I felt when I was unable to hit a ball in a straight line. The other sport I enjoyed was cycling. I got into it at age 12, when, for reasons I don’t really remember, I decided I wanted to do the Argus Tour. My dad had been cycling for years, and I remember being quite awed that he did this long race with so many people, and how fit and tough he used to look after a hard training ride. Maybe I just subconsciously wanted to sabotage my father’s one escape from a house full of women, I don’t know. So I set my sights on my goal, and my dad went from being a super-fit, competitive cyclist, to pushing a crampy 12 year old up Suikerbossie, and subsequently a 13 year old, 14 year old and 16 year old – until I discovered boys and booze, and cycling with dad was no longer cool. Cycling for me holds many great memories, including the time my dad, on a racer with toe clips, accidentally went off the road and onto the gravel shoulder on the Kommetjie side of Smits at about 60km/hr, and hung on for dear life, helpless, while the bike bounced cartoon-style over stones and nearly launched him into the neighbouring ditch. Or the time I was racing down Boyes Drive and tried to make a turn crouched low like they do on a race track on TV, and came a spectacular cropper when I hit some unseen gravel. Good times. But even cycling, while I loved the sensation of being outdoors in the sun on a bike and the beauty of road racing in Cape Town, was never an easy sell for me. I employed all sorts of subtle tricks to dissuade my dad from a training ride – not because I didn’t want to be on the bike, but because the idea of actually getting up from whatever I was currently doing, getting changed and going out sounded like far too much PT.
So it was with great trepidation that I joined a gym – again – in 2002 (my family previously had a family package membership at the old Health and Racket Club in Constantia, but we didn’t go on any sort of regular basis). I surprised myself by getting fit fairly quickly, and enjoying the fact that I could run hard for 30 minutes on the treadmill without collapsing or – even worse – looking like an overripe, ready to burst tomato. I went to gym in short, infrequent bursts from 2002 to 2005, when I came over here – never doing so little that my membership wasn’t justified, but never doing enough to be able to claim that I was anything above a periphery member (as opposed to a gym bunny - you know the type: glowing, lean, barely dressed bodies who glide around with long blonde hair hanging loose and never breaking a sweat, except when sitting in the sauna).
When we moved into our current apartment, I started going to the gym in our complex, which is small and ill-equipped when compared to franchise gyms, but only a 4 minute walk from our place, so I was sold. I’ve had almost a year now to develop a routine, but my anti-gym-bodies (like antibodies, but they help you fight the need to exercise) have been on red alert status here. They say things like, What? You’re in England! You’ll never need to wear a bikini again! – and so I settle down to another episode of Desperate Housewives. That all changed a few months ago when Shoes started taking an interest in working out, which he’s never done before. Over the last 6 months, he’s gone from having what I’ve always thought to be a sexy body, to having a physique that’s starting to look as if it belongs on a model’s z-card (not quite Men’s Health yet, but certainly well on the way). Before you ask, not once has he ever suggested I make more of an effort – those guys who slyly play on their girlfriend’s insecurities by telling them that “a bit of exercise would do you wonders, babe” should all be shot. But when your man starts to look even hotter than usual, you start thinking, well hey, if I appreciate this so much, I guess he would do the same – and hey presto! I’m sticking to my four times a week, and – shock and horror – I’m not resenting every second I have to grind away on the treadmill. Doing something for myself because I want a particular result not only for me, but for another person who doesn’t mind either way (v. important point) is proving to be very self satisfying. I feel like the cat that got the low-fat cream.
Let me back track a little here, so you can see why this development is so noteworthy. I do not like exercise. Not as in, oh, I don’t really feel like running my daily 10km this morning, but I’ll do it because I’m a health freak kind of way – as in, I abhor, detest, am appalled by the idea of getting off my ass and working myself into a stinky, wheezing, jelly-legged lump, when the alternative is SO much more appealing. I am a born couch potato; I relish sprawling in front of the TV, or, if it’s summer, outside with a good book and lots of suntan lotion – I’m not usually found enthusiastically throwing a Frisbee on the shoreline. In school, I was the kid who couldn’t – the one who was picked near-to-last for girls P.E. softball; the one who did ‘social’ tennis and ‘D team’ hockey (which was only called that so we didn’t feel like complete knobs – we never played an actual match) and then only because it was compulsory; the one whose hand-eye co-ordination was, and still is, so bad that if you throw a set a keys at me on my way out the door, I am likely to flap like an albatross.
The one sport I thoroughly enjoyed and was always motivated to practice was gymnastics. I did it from age 10 through 14, and I got my Western Province colours – possibly the only school-recognized sporting achievement of my life. I think the reason I loved it so much was because I could make my body do things that the other kids couldn’t do – a stark contrast to how I felt when I was unable to hit a ball in a straight line. The other sport I enjoyed was cycling. I got into it at age 12, when, for reasons I don’t really remember, I decided I wanted to do the Argus Tour. My dad had been cycling for years, and I remember being quite awed that he did this long race with so many people, and how fit and tough he used to look after a hard training ride. Maybe I just subconsciously wanted to sabotage my father’s one escape from a house full of women, I don’t know. So I set my sights on my goal, and my dad went from being a super-fit, competitive cyclist, to pushing a crampy 12 year old up Suikerbossie, and subsequently a 13 year old, 14 year old and 16 year old – until I discovered boys and booze, and cycling with dad was no longer cool. Cycling for me holds many great memories, including the time my dad, on a racer with toe clips, accidentally went off the road and onto the gravel shoulder on the Kommetjie side of Smits at about 60km/hr, and hung on for dear life, helpless, while the bike bounced cartoon-style over stones and nearly launched him into the neighbouring ditch. Or the time I was racing down Boyes Drive and tried to make a turn crouched low like they do on a race track on TV, and came a spectacular cropper when I hit some unseen gravel. Good times. But even cycling, while I loved the sensation of being outdoors in the sun on a bike and the beauty of road racing in Cape Town, was never an easy sell for me. I employed all sorts of subtle tricks to dissuade my dad from a training ride – not because I didn’t want to be on the bike, but because the idea of actually getting up from whatever I was currently doing, getting changed and going out sounded like far too much PT.
So it was with great trepidation that I joined a gym – again – in 2002 (my family previously had a family package membership at the old Health and Racket Club in Constantia, but we didn’t go on any sort of regular basis). I surprised myself by getting fit fairly quickly, and enjoying the fact that I could run hard for 30 minutes on the treadmill without collapsing or – even worse – looking like an overripe, ready to burst tomato. I went to gym in short, infrequent bursts from 2002 to 2005, when I came over here – never doing so little that my membership wasn’t justified, but never doing enough to be able to claim that I was anything above a periphery member (as opposed to a gym bunny - you know the type: glowing, lean, barely dressed bodies who glide around with long blonde hair hanging loose and never breaking a sweat, except when sitting in the sauna).
When we moved into our current apartment, I started going to the gym in our complex, which is small and ill-equipped when compared to franchise gyms, but only a 4 minute walk from our place, so I was sold. I’ve had almost a year now to develop a routine, but my anti-gym-bodies (like antibodies, but they help you fight the need to exercise) have been on red alert status here. They say things like, What? You’re in England! You’ll never need to wear a bikini again! – and so I settle down to another episode of Desperate Housewives. That all changed a few months ago when Shoes started taking an interest in working out, which he’s never done before. Over the last 6 months, he’s gone from having what I’ve always thought to be a sexy body, to having a physique that’s starting to look as if it belongs on a model’s z-card (not quite Men’s Health yet, but certainly well on the way). Before you ask, not once has he ever suggested I make more of an effort – those guys who slyly play on their girlfriend’s insecurities by telling them that “a bit of exercise would do you wonders, babe” should all be shot. But when your man starts to look even hotter than usual, you start thinking, well hey, if I appreciate this so much, I guess he would do the same – and hey presto! I’m sticking to my four times a week, and – shock and horror – I’m not resenting every second I have to grind away on the treadmill. Doing something for myself because I want a particular result not only for me, but for another person who doesn’t mind either way (v. important point) is proving to be very self satisfying. I feel like the cat that got the low-fat cream.
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