There is a joke, about fitness, actually about Cross Fit, which is the activity favoured by Number One Daughter, which goes:
How do you know when somebody is into Cross Fit?
The answer is: because they never stop bloody talking about it.
This is funny, because if you know anybody who is into Cross Fit, it is absolutely true.
It seems to turn from a hobby into a passion into an addiction with rather startling speed and predictability. Number One Daughter has spent hours on the phone to me talking about Wods and cleans and jerks, and strict muscle ups, completely oblivious to the fact that I have not had the first idea what she is going on about.
It is a bit like listening to somebody talking a language that you learned at school twenty years ago. You can pick up the odd word here and there if you concentrate hard, and if you are lucky you might get the general gist, but other than that it is just a stream of syllables. I have been obliged to seek enlightenment by making notes and going to look things up on the internet afterwards.
Whilst I am unlikely ever to be quite so enraptured, nevertheless I noticed today that I had become quite keen to tell the world about my exercise activity. Number One Daughter phoned this afternoon, and I spilled out an excited ramble about run times and rowing machines, pleased to have an audience that was actually interested.
Number One Daughter is the only listener who comes into that category.
I have had to be self controlled not to fill these pages with such whitterings. I can tell you that had I not spared a last-minute thought for my target audience, ie, you, I would have gone on and on about cycling gradients until you clicked the back button and returned to Facebook.
It is entirely all-encompassing, this becoming fitter. I even thought today that I would have a go at eating more healthily.
I made myself a post-walk breakfast of leaves in a wrap, enlivened by the odd olive to cheer it up, because Number One Son-In-Law said that I should eat vegetables.
I do not usually do vegetables. They are not exciting on sandwiches.
When I had eaten it I was still so hungry I had to have a slab of cherry cake as well. I put butter on it, just to make sure the gap was filled, and then was so contentedly exhausted and full that I fell asleep.
I woke up in the early afternoon and had to rush round doing housework things before Mark came home. Then I cleaned and waterproofed my boots, ready for tomorrow’s fellside adventure, and once all of the day’s tedium was dealt with, went upstairs to carry on painting pictures on the door for the camper van wardrobe.
I like doing this but somehow seem to spend so much of my life asleep that there is never enough time. I am painting leaves and flowers at the moment, and this takes absolutely ages. It is a happy thing to be doing, though, especially if there is something interesting on the radio. I am painting little flowers in a deep red colour.
In the end Mark came home, tired after his day’s work. He sat on the taxi rank for a little while, and then went home to bed.
I am still here. I do not mind this. I have had a sleep today, and done lots of exercise, and have got a good book and plenty of chai. This seems to me to be a perfectly happy state of affairs.
The picture is my morning walk. I know I am taking a lot of these. This is because nothing else is happening to me at the moment.
The Bleep Test is in a couple of weeks.
That is ages. I am bound to have become lean with muscle definition by then.
