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| This is a really kind-hearted artist's rendering of what I look like after exercising |
That’s not
an excuse for my complete lack of fitness (as excuses go, I’ve made better),
but rather more of a philosophical viewpoint.
Obviously
the real reason I’m unfit is because I’m lazy, but for the first 20 years of my
life I was lazy in a less obvious way. I’d
always preferred team sports over the individual pursuits, and it was easy to
assume this was because I was a naturally social person (an absurd assumption
really, when combined with the well-known fact that I don’t like people).
Retrospectively
I realise the real reason I so excelled at softball, basketball, hockey, cricket
and touch football was because they actually involved a superb amount of
standing. You may think to yourself that
basketball, hockey and touch football in particular actually involve a
ludicrous amount of running, but you’d be wrong – not the way I played
them. I am an excellent stander (for no
longer than 60 minutes). When a whole
team of people are running around madly, it can actually be considered an asset
to be the one person who will always be reliably found standing in the same spot.
The only
time I’ve managed to become some version of athletic was by complete
accident. I hiked the Machu Picchu trail
and I can only assume the lack of the oxygen in the air made me more efficient
at breathing or something (because that’s how those things work, surely).
When I went
to university I got a bicycle and briefly became determined to be one of those
people who rode everywhere (you know, Dutch, but with a point), and promptly
failed. I lacked the necessary balance
and grit to ride up hills and inevitably ended up walking my bike most of the
way.
That was 8
years ago, which is how long it took for me to recover from the mortification
of being overtaken by toddlers on tricycles.
So here I
am, in my late 20’s, newly emboldened to try to become fit. I’m attempting this through running, but you
know what they say, you have to wog
before you can run. Where do they say that (Mother Painefull
wonders to herself as she engages in her weekly furniture rearranging
session)? Cool places mum, that’s where.
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| This is a rather sarcastic artist's rendering of what wogging looks like, the kind of clothes I do it in, and what sports bras do to my breasts - thanks Phil, you douche |
I’m sure I
don’t have to explain what wogging is, but I will. It’s the pursuit of personal transportation
through a combination of both walking and jogging. And because it’s pretty much a science, I can
tell you it can only become such a hybrid once 10% of the journey is done with
jogging. Of course, once the jogging
takes up over 50% it becomes jalking (please don’t argue with me over the
naming system, I have put a rather sad
amount of thought into this – I think ‘brunch’ and ‘liger’ prove that the
dominant feature gets leading naming rights, don’t you?).
But as I
mentioned, it’s been 8 years since I attempted any meaningful and regular
exercise, and 2 new facts have emerged:
1. Wogging is actually incredibly boring
2. Without my glasses I am basically blind
As such I’ve
had to invent games to make it more interesting, and fortunately wogging blind
provided the very first one. This game
was called ‘Man-Woman?’ Without spectacles I can’t even pick someone’s
gender until they’re standing beside me… with that in mind I tend to lose at
this game more than I win.
After
tripping over several hoses, 2 branches, a crack in the pavement, and an orange
safety cone I started wearing my glasses while wogging, which meant coming up
with a new game. This one is called ‘Engage!’. When playing this game you get a point for
every time you get someone to respond to your greeting while you wog. This has the added bonus of alleviating some
of the concern of people who look at me as if I’m dying as I heave past them,
gasping for air.
You lose a
point for every fail, and get bonus points if both members of a couple respond
to your engagement, or if you can somehow get someone to spontaneously high
five you as you go past (it’s only happened once, and it was a wonderful day).
I wouldn’t
say I’m getting fit, so much as I’m getting moderately less unfit. And the public nature of the whole thing is
helping with my innate laziness. The
ease with which I get mortified in front of strangers, combined with the amount
of construction workers sitting around listening to talkback radio in my
suburb, means I spend much more time jogging, and trying to look nonchalant
while doing it, than my body really wants to allow. For some reason I’m really determined that
these predominantly overweight men think I’m running the whole way (in reality
I doubt they notice, but it’s somehow important to me to think they do… like
it’s important to me not to make eye contact with the cashier while buying
tampons).
Painefull
Out
