Now, as you all may have gathered, Pink Poodle is not the most physically active of people. She wants to be but it's just not in her genetic makeup...but if giraffes can genetically manipulate and evolve themselves over millenia to have long necks, then certainly something can be done about a certain pooch's fitness levels!!
I wrote eons ago about joining the gym and my super trainer and well that's about all I wrote. I persisted with him for 5 months and then found out he'd been training me incorrectly because he's an IDIOT. I was being trained like a man, and luckily I'm not a man because if I was I'd be MASSIVE after that long. Heavy weights are not the way forward.
Anyway I fired him, hired another and have since dropped him too. No great advances but I'm trying my hardest to fall in love with the treadmill. It's an uphill battle...pun intended. I'm happy to sit on a bike and peddle for 40 minutes, but pop me on the treadmill and I feel a sense of dread, like I've just been handed a life sentence. The most peculiar thing happens to me when I run - just when I think I've mastered it, that I CAN DO IT, I look down and see that I've been running for a grand total of like 4.38 minutes. My brain recognises that while this is indeed a triumph of sorts, it's still a hell of a long way short of the 20 solid minutes I'm striving for and my whole body constricts and almost hurts as it realises just how much pain I have left to endure. Burning lungs, fear of falling backwards off the machine or tripping over my size 41 feet and falling face-first and smashing my freshly-whitened teeth on the controls....yes, all of these thoughts circulate through my jiggly brain as I jog.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to make your brain quiet? It's like when Charlotte has to see the fertility doctor in Sex and The City - she can't make her thoughts stop. I do my best thinking at the gym, but sometimes everything goes into overdrive and I have to just blast my eardrums with music to drown it all out. I've heard a properly constructed playlist is the way to go if I want to be a runner. I've constructed the playlist and now just need to persist with the running business....
In other breaking news (that broke about 4 months ago) our company recently came up with the bright idea of sending us on unpaid leave in order to save money. This really was a bright idea - I wasn't taking the piss. Thousands of crew jumped at the chance, myself included. I managed to score all of October off work and I'm so excited I'm wagging my ponytail like an excited puppy!
Jena and I have plans for embarking on a two-week extravaganza-type tour of Jordan and Egypt and then I'm heading home for the other two weeks to spend time with my nearest and dearest, celebrate two weddings, two younger cousin's birthdays and dash about like a mad woman and meet new babies, see new houses and generally just kiss people I've been missing. Maybe I should step up the running if I want to fit all that in....oh AND I get to catch a 2.45am flight back to Dubai on MY BIRTHDAY. That'll just be the high point of my holiday...fingers crossed for a few days off in early November so I can fly out a day or two later and enjoy Mum's awesome cooking. Perhaps I should stop thinking about falling off treadmills and start strategising which cake I want her to cook me for dinner....
I must say now, Jena deserves all credit for planning this holiday. While I am the one in our relationship who can read subway maps upside down and covered in mud, she is the planner. I am crap at planning, preferring to just wing it. My mate Michael set a perfect example of winging it in Jordan and Egypt earlier this year and when I suggested following his lead Jena shot me a look that said "do I look like a FOOL?!?!?!"
Clearly she is not a fool (when it comes to planning!) and has booked us onto 2 tours, one of each place, 2 flights and numerous other things. What she forgot to mention to me was that this plan of hers involves HIKING. My job was to compile a reasonable amount of background notes from the itineraries and things we were given so we know what we're looking at (how old the rocks are and what exactly the Pyramids were really all about) and how much money to take and what currencies to take it in, blah blah. So, there I was, hurriedly converting all of our tickets and bookings into documents that could be saved on my USB stick so I can print them out for Miss Planner and I came across the following line that sent a shock of fear and treadmill-sized dread into my very core: A good level of physical fitness is required for certain parts of this trip. On the day we visit Mt Sinai and St Katherine's Monastery you can hire a camel for the first two thirds of the journey but the remaining 700 steps to the summit must be completed on foot.
Cue similar untimely-death themed music to that from Jaws....
Apparently the "3750 Steps of Repentance" is a physically demanding trail. I don't have that much to repent for, I swear!!
As I yelled though the wall between our bedrooms that she'd forgotten to mention that small fact to me, I'm sure I heard a little gleeful giggle....guess I'd better up my trips to the gym in the next 4 days if I want to have any hope of arriving at the summit looking human!
I wrote eons ago about joining the gym and my super trainer and well that's about all I wrote. I persisted with him for 5 months and then found out he'd been training me incorrectly because he's an IDIOT. I was being trained like a man, and luckily I'm not a man because if I was I'd be MASSIVE after that long. Heavy weights are not the way forward.
Anyway I fired him, hired another and have since dropped him too. No great advances but I'm trying my hardest to fall in love with the treadmill. It's an uphill battle...pun intended. I'm happy to sit on a bike and peddle for 40 minutes, but pop me on the treadmill and I feel a sense of dread, like I've just been handed a life sentence. The most peculiar thing happens to me when I run - just when I think I've mastered it, that I CAN DO IT, I look down and see that I've been running for a grand total of like 4.38 minutes. My brain recognises that while this is indeed a triumph of sorts, it's still a hell of a long way short of the 20 solid minutes I'm striving for and my whole body constricts and almost hurts as it realises just how much pain I have left to endure. Burning lungs, fear of falling backwards off the machine or tripping over my size 41 feet and falling face-first and smashing my freshly-whitened teeth on the controls....yes, all of these thoughts circulate through my jiggly brain as I jog.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to make your brain quiet? It's like when Charlotte has to see the fertility doctor in Sex and The City - she can't make her thoughts stop. I do my best thinking at the gym, but sometimes everything goes into overdrive and I have to just blast my eardrums with music to drown it all out. I've heard a properly constructed playlist is the way to go if I want to be a runner. I've constructed the playlist and now just need to persist with the running business....
In other breaking news (that broke about 4 months ago) our company recently came up with the bright idea of sending us on unpaid leave in order to save money. This really was a bright idea - I wasn't taking the piss. Thousands of crew jumped at the chance, myself included. I managed to score all of October off work and I'm so excited I'm wagging my ponytail like an excited puppy!
Jena and I have plans for embarking on a two-week extravaganza-type tour of Jordan and Egypt and then I'm heading home for the other two weeks to spend time with my nearest and dearest, celebrate two weddings, two younger cousin's birthdays and dash about like a mad woman and meet new babies, see new houses and generally just kiss people I've been missing. Maybe I should step up the running if I want to fit all that in....oh AND I get to catch a 2.45am flight back to Dubai on MY BIRTHDAY. That'll just be the high point of my holiday...fingers crossed for a few days off in early November so I can fly out a day or two later and enjoy Mum's awesome cooking. Perhaps I should stop thinking about falling off treadmills and start strategising which cake I want her to cook me for dinner....
I must say now, Jena deserves all credit for planning this holiday. While I am the one in our relationship who can read subway maps upside down and covered in mud, she is the planner. I am crap at planning, preferring to just wing it. My mate Michael set a perfect example of winging it in Jordan and Egypt earlier this year and when I suggested following his lead Jena shot me a look that said "do I look like a FOOL?!?!?!"
Clearly she is not a fool (when it comes to planning!) and has booked us onto 2 tours, one of each place, 2 flights and numerous other things. What she forgot to mention to me was that this plan of hers involves HIKING. My job was to compile a reasonable amount of background notes from the itineraries and things we were given so we know what we're looking at (how old the rocks are and what exactly the Pyramids were really all about) and how much money to take and what currencies to take it in, blah blah. So, there I was, hurriedly converting all of our tickets and bookings into documents that could be saved on my USB stick so I can print them out for Miss Planner and I came across the following line that sent a shock of fear and treadmill-sized dread into my very core: A good level of physical fitness is required for certain parts of this trip. On the day we visit Mt Sinai and St Katherine's Monastery you can hire a camel for the first two thirds of the journey but the remaining 700 steps to the summit must be completed on foot.
Cue similar untimely-death themed music to that from Jaws....
Apparently the "3750 Steps of Repentance" is a physically demanding trail. I don't have that much to repent for, I swear!!
As I yelled though the wall between our bedrooms that she'd forgotten to mention that small fact to me, I'm sure I heard a little gleeful giggle....guess I'd better up my trips to the gym in the next 4 days if I want to have any hope of arriving at the summit looking human!
1 comment:
Haha! Quit yo' jibba jabba, fool! ;)
Admittedly i, too, skimmed over the parts that mentioned 'trekking', 'hiking' & anything referring to 'difficult terrain' & 'tough conditions':P
She'll be right!
Bring on the pyramids to Petra adventure, Minxy!!!
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