I have a confession to make.
From Elaine Simpson-Long
I have a confession to make.
I have a love/hate relationship with exercise. Well, more hate than love to be honest.
I attended a school, many moons ago, when we were out on the playing fields in the freezing cold, gym tunics on (no leggings in those days), and getting hacked around the ankles with hockey sticks. We were made to climb ropes in the gym at which I was useless and would slide down suffering rope burns as I hit the floor. Vaulting over the awful wooden horse, dreadful. Fell off so many times they gave up with me and decided as I was a Big Girl, ie 5.9” they would give me the goal keeper position in netball (another awful game which involved a lot of running around and shrieking) working on the premise that I could stop the balls soaring towards me. They were wrong.
In my life I have tried Zumba, line dancing, steps (which did my knees in and they have never recovered) swimming which I love but oh the awfulness of getting dressed afterwards and pulling your trousers over damp legs etc, pilates (quite enjoyed that) and yoga which I also enjoyed. At the end of a session we had a relaxing bit when we lay on our mats and the instructor would talk very quietly about how we were little acorns growing through the ground and turning into oak trees at which point I used to fall fast asleep and had to be woken from my slumbers.
So – walking. That was the solution.
When commuting to London for 25 years I had a half hour walk to my office from Liverpool Street which kept me fit. Then when I retired the walking went to pot as I revelled in slothfulness and the joy of knowing I no longer had to get up at the crack of dawn.
It was a long slow slide to being totally unfit.
Lockdown came – so then I made the effort to go out every day. I would wander round my neighbourhood and exchange frantic waves with anybody who I came across. I would walk on the beach at Frinton and once again wave madly at peeps walking their dogs. Oddly enough by the end of lockdown I was on my way to fitness.
Then came The Hip. Yes it got worse and worse and painful and walking was impossible. I got a new one. So physio and back to walking which by then was the only exercise I could contemplate. But as we all know walking on your own can be boring and tedious and also unsafe for women.
I persisted though and then one day spotted a note on Facebook asking would anybody like to join a walking group WOMEN ONLY. Yes I thought and signed up straight away.
I turned up at the location for the first walk, very nervous and wondering what was going to happen. I saw a blonde woman arrive and pranced up to her beaming from ear to ear “hello are you Rebecca?” This lady looked me up and down as if I was lower than the dust beneath her chariot wheels, said coldly “No” and walked off. I retreated to my car, suitably crushed, and then Rebecca did appear and suddenly a whole bunch of us got out of our parked cars and met up and off we went.
I have to be honest here and say that Rebecca had to sit with me towards the end of this walk as I was not sure I was going to make it as I sat there puffing away like a grampus. But I did though I had to lie down in a darkened room for an hour when I got home.
Since then I have done more walking than I ever thought I would and have had the joy of meeting up with so many funny, witty, interesting and lovely women. We all have our own stories and backgrounds and the support and friendship shown by everybody I have met is simply wonderful.
I still get out of breath when going uphill and I am usually plodding at the back but my health has improved amazingly over the last year or so and I have discovered parts of Colchester I never knew existed.
While checking some quotes the other day I stumbled across this one which is attributed to Henry David Thoreau and I thought it was rather fun:
“I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understand the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks – who had the genius, so to speak, for sauntering; which word is beautifully derived “from idle people who roved about the country in the Middle Ages and asked for charity, under the pretense of going a la sainte Terre” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed “there goes a Sainte-terre”a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander”
There you are.
We are all saints.
Not many people know that…..
