My ma has this friend who cures sick people for a living. She's as sweet as glazed apples, but sweetness doesn't get you picked first for teams in dreaded high school PE class. Only a few months back, she jumped on the pastime called exercise, as her outlet for the lemons life decided to throw in her direction.

She finished a biathlon last weekend - 8km of running, 37km of biking & 4km of running. To the mathematician, that's 49kms of achey limbs. To the majority of the population, that's tough shit.

Once I put my jaw back in its place & set my astonishment aside, I have to announce that I have absolutely no excuse for not accomplishing so much more in terms of fitness. I am nineteen, & yes, I am a far cry from the lazy armchair-fixture I used to be. But I am meant to be at the pinnacle of my health, at the prime of my fitness(!) but all I am is actually just pwned by a forty-something, who only started training a few months ago. Needless to say, I am absolutely inspired to get this arse into gear.

I know I've been mercilessly recycling the 'fitness' theme on this blog, & I'm sorry! I must sound like the most broken of records, the most boring of classes on plumbing-for-stone-cottages!

But the reason I am so obsessed with conquering this fitness thing stems largely from years of childhood trauma... & perhaps the time calls for an anecdote:

In freshman year (yr 9) of my living in Ohio days, I looked forward to PE class as much as boys look forward to castration. I'd get picked 2nd to last for teams, & I'd routinely get two strikes in baseball & then get pelted in the breasticles by the very fast, very painful ball. Any team losses, because of dropped balls & missed hits were most often on my behalf. It goes without saying that PE was definitely a fruitful time in the shaping of my self-esteem. That, & I was also an absolute babe.

Now, one fateful day, we made our way to the track field. Had I any notion of imaginative thinking at that point, I may have said that our breathing foretold that of cattle being led for slaughter. We were told that participating in a run was mandatory, failure to do so would mean an F for the semester, & that the sign-up sheet was on the table. I spent the next few minutes telling the coach that I should be exempt because of my asthma. She asked if I had a medical certificate or even a puffer, & the answer was 'no' on both accounts. So with an air of defeat, I had to run for the sake of my life. Being an extreme babe, my 'life' was essentially my 'grade'.

Now, what I didn't realise was that there were varying degrees of runs on the sign-up sheet. The least of all evils was the 100m sprint. In hindsight, I think I could have done that. However, having spent prior minutes convincing the teacher of my blatant inability to run, I missed out on the lesser evils. By the time I got to the sign-up sheet, ALL THAT WAS LEFT WAS THE 2KM RUN. /fmylife

You have to understand that gruelling & fulfilling exercise to me was equivalent to flailing my arms for three minutes, holding weights also known as Campbell's soupcans, or walking from my chair to the fridge for another bowl of ice-cream. (No lie.) That day, I was the sorriest sack of shit on that field, gasping for air like the ugliest of fish & clutching my guts like a woman in labour. To this day, the shame still haunts me during the stillest of nights. I went home that day & told my mother I demanded a medical certificate for my asthma. She laughed at me & asked what made me think I had asthma. As it turns out, my shortness of breath was not actually asthma, but terrible fitness levels & possibly blocked arteries. The most shameful part is I was actually convinced I had asthma.

So there, context.

This is why I am now obsessed with fitness & strength. This is my penance & apology to my twelve year old self for ever letting her be exposed to that sort of trauma. On that note, I told my dad the other day of my desire to do parkour, & his response was a fat resounding laugh. Thank you, papa, I totally feel the faith!

(But I'm absolutely serious about working on my mental & physical discipline required for parkour. For the past week or so, I've been doing pushups, planks & hovers before letting the head hit the bed. Any of you fit kids out there have tips for core-strengthening exercises? Throw them my way, por favor!)

& on an absolutely unrelated note, I was going through my @replies on twitter, & I saw so many I had missed from when they were sent! I don't know if this was a twitter glitch or just my bad eyesight, but I was a little miffed for not having seen them when they were sent. Case in point:


BUT YEAH, TOTALLY BE JEALOUS BECAUSE I GOT TWEETED ABOUT BY HAYLEY G, & SHE IS BETTER THAN PELVIC-FLOOR EXERCISES.

ciao lovelies.
xx

Posted in: anecdote, asthma, babyporridge, fitness, gym class, hayleyghoover, nikki malvar, running, twitter bragging on Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at at 11:48 PM