You've got to do something you enjoy, said my fit friend. Oh YEAH, I thought, a dim light turning on in the dusty backwaters of that thing I used to call my mind, back in the day when I could think and everything. Yeah, that's right. Exercise needs to be FUN.
So I laughed hollowly for a bit, and wondered what on earth I could do that wouldn't be like pulling my own toenails out with my teeth. It took a while. Then a slow, snake-like memory uncoiled itself in the back of my mind. I quite enjoy swimming, I thought.
Immediately, the Anti-Exercise Brigade of Doubts that lives inside my head and has been successfully stopping me exercising for years leapt into action. "You can't SWIM OFTEN!" it hissed to me. "You won't enjoy it as much. It won't be a treat. And it'll ruin your hair." It took me days, days I tell you, before I realised that a) I could use a swimming cap, and that b) since I haven't visited a hairdresser for four years I clearly don't care about my hair very much anyway.
So I devised a plan. A plan that said "I will swim in one of those long race things that they have here in Auckland. Sometime in the next few years." Then, like all good plans, it got left on the shelf. But I'm writing it down here, to make it real. I am going to try to swim 1 km in ocean water, in less than 40 minutes (the official cut-off time for the Open Swim I am entering) in April. However in order to do this I am going to have to learn to do proper freestyle, you know, not just gasping for breath and giving up after a length or so. Oh, and I am going to TRY to run 6 km on Rangitoto in March, when they have this big running day. You have four hours to finish, so I am in with some chance there.
I'm setting these goals because, you see, I have realised that the Anti-Exercise Brigade of Doubts (AEBD) is an immensely powerful force. I can get to the gym, drop off my son to the creche where he will be welcomed and well-treated, walk into the gym or swimming area, and decide that actually I don't want to exercise at all today, yesterday when I really enjoyed it was actually a bit of a fluke, I'm no good at this physical malarky, I'd be better off going and drinking a nice cappucino, or maybe sit in the sauna instead. If I actually start exercising and persevere for more than a couple of minutes, the AEBD goes into retreat for a bit, but then it does come back for a second round just when I realise that I am slightly out of breath. It suggests that I don't want to overdo it and that today is a really bad day to exercise properly because after all it's Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday, and soon it will be the weekend, or rather it's Monday or Tuesday, and I should leave serious exercise until later in the week.
So I have drawn up some goals, to try to put the AEBD back into its place.
The AEBD always march in when I am 2-10 minutes into my halfhearted jog. During minutes 10-20 they go quiet but hover in the background. Then I head for home, thinking '20 minutes is better than nothing' and just then... they disappear and that weird endorphin thing starts to happen, and I think crazy thoughts like 'I could do all that again/ I will run twice as far tomorrow/ this is really very pleasant'.
ReplyDeleteMy point being, the AEBD do go away after a little while. Knowing that is what enables me to tell them to naff off in the first 10 mins.