This year I was offered the opportunity to complete the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award. I leapt at the chance to pick up a prestigious award when my daily life already meant I fulfilled much of its criteria (volunteering at a youth club and playing the piano). There was however one catch. Namely physical exercise. In the past sport has ended up with me being very sweaty, very humiliated and very angry but I figured that I must return to the steely grasp of the P.E. department to fulfil my aims.
To complete my physical exercise programme I had to visit the gym once per week and measure my improved fitness, which sounds immensely simple - but nothing could be further from the truth.
The gym is an intriguing concept. Apparently for a few hours work per week you can transform yourself from a flabby kitkat slobbering mess into a sleek muscle machine. Unfortunately, the reality is quite different. If anyone knows anything more dull than running towards a wall for half an hour I'd like to hear about it. Aside form the mundane running machine there is the ridiculously elaborate muscle making machines, which work on things I've never heard of, the cross-trainer (used solely by arthritic pensioners) and a couple of large plastic balls that seem to have come along just for the ride. Honestly, who would balance themselves on a large ball in full public glare!
Anyway kitted in ill-fitting gym clobber I made a b-line straight to the gym with the glimmer of hope I might enjoy myself, go regularly and suddenly be some sort of mythical hunk in my year group. Things went badly right from the off. I parked myself on a bicycle machine and started pumping muscles that had only just realised they existed. I did however notice a problem - this was about ten times duller than riding on a bicycle out in the open air. Instead of being accompanied by sweeping greenery and refreshing breezes I was surrounded by a lot of plastic and posers. My boredom became quite explicit when I began cycling so slowly that the machine switched itself off. After five years I turned to look at the clock, which informed me I'd been there for twenty minutes. My prospects were bleak.
I needed to play for time. I spotted the prime opportunity: water. Anyone in the gym needs water so I spent around ten minutes messing around by purchasing the bottle, drinking the contents and then filling it up again slowly. By this time I needed the toilet so that was another couple of minutes well spent. Now I was back in the gym and the running machine beckoned so I obliged. I share the same observation here as I had with the bike machine, which is why run in the world's worst room when you can run outside. After ten minutes I'd had my fill and still had to somehow waste twenty more minutes in the artificial torture chamber. There was no way in hell I was climbing aboard one of those muscle machines so I had some more water and left.
I'm not obese, in fact I'm not even overweight. I occasionally kick a ball around with friends and eat fairly healthily. I certainly do not play sport regularly. Therefore I need the gym like I need an Aston Martin - it would be nice but it's not happening and that doesn't really matter. I shall fully accept my mid-life beer belly and sit alongside similarly chubby ex-gym monkeys knowing I spent my time having a life rather than running to nowhere, cycling to nowhere and rowing to nowhere.
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