Number One: It’s A Health Thing…
One of the many reasons I became a writer was because it involves a lot of sitting around. To a chubby child who was always last to be picked for sports teams at school, it sounded like the perfect career. It has turned out to be my dream job, but the biggest advantage I saw in writing as a child is actually one big drawback.
Once I left school and began life behind a different sort of desk, I started piling on the weight. “If I eat a 200g bar of chocolate, I put on a kilo of weight. Anything that goes into my mouth heads straight for my hips, and stays there. It must be genetic, Doctor!” I wailed.
“Rubbish!” he snapped back, for this was in the days before fat-shaming was A Thing, “I know your family. Keep them away from cake and they’re built like whippets. And don’t bother saying you’ve got a slow metabolism. The bigger you are, the faster it has to work.”
I was given all sorts of tests. The only thing wrong with me was a marginally under-active thyroid gland. I was prescribed tablets. I started taking them, and sat back expecting the weight to fall off. It didn’t. The clue, although I didn’t spot it at the time, was in those two slender words, “sat back”.
I didn’t think my weight problem could be my fault. A lot of people expand because of poor nutrition, but I knew that couldn’t be the case for me. I’ve always grown as much of my family’s food as possible, and to make sure we all get our “five-a-day”. I cook meals from fresh ingredients almost all the time, conveniently forgetting that organic doesn’t mean “non-fattening”. I love food almost as much as I love writing, and that’s the problem. If I’m idle, tired, bored or unhappy, I eat. Like the workhouse boys in Lionel Bart’s Oliver! I love that full-up feeling.
The only way to enjoy that, and not become spherical is to use more calories than I take in. I bought a cheap pedometer, and started walking 10,000 steps per day. That was easy when the children were at our local village primary school. I was walking a minimum of two miles per day each working week during term time (and avoiding all the school-gate squabbles over car parking).
Then I was struck down with a bad reaction to an insect bite. I went from walking miles each day to barely being able to hobble as far as the garden gate.
My husband bought me a treadmill to help my recovery. Slowly, I built back up to being able to reach my target of 10k per day again. Then DD borrowed Running Made Easy by Susie Whalley and Lisa Jackson from the library. After reading only a few pages over her shoulder, I sent off for my own copy. I’d never run before without a ferocious PE teacher snapping at my heels, but I wanted that book. It had charts to fill in and boxes to tick, and I can never resist a progress chart!
I worked through the book, then discovered the NHS’s Couch to 5K programme. Working on my treadmill because I was afraid of falling on the uneven forest tracks, I went right through the programme. I now exercise for half an hour, every other day. My sessions are made up of five minutes walking, twenty minutes running at a speed that leaves me just about able to hold a conversation—as long as it’s simple!—then a five-minute cool down walk.
If I’m honest I find running both a chore and a bore, although the high I get when I finish a run is fantastic. The trouble is, I have to do it all over again, forty-seven and a half hours later. I run as soon as I wake up, before I can think of an excuse not to do it. I can’t write while I run, so that’s annoying. I find even thinking about work difficult while I’m running. Having the radio on full blast so I can hear it over the sound of the extractor fan and my pounding feet is not an option at 5.30am. I had to wait until I got an i-phone before I discovered a way of bringing some fun to running. I made a playlist specially for my sessions on the treadmill. It definitely speeds things up.
Here it is…
- Lawrence of Arabia (Main Theme) by Maurice Jarre —This is loud, evocative, and perfect for my warm-up as the march section is just over 5kph—my walking speed!
- The Trap (Main Theme) by Ron Goodwin—For as Dr Sheldon Cooper said, “What is life without whimsey?”
- Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash—When I saw Walking the Line, my joints were so painful I could only sit and watch other people moving, and that definitely tortured me!
- Chariots of Fire by Vangelis (Main Theme) See The Trap above!
- Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (Main Theme) by John Williams—this was playing on the radio one day when Number One Son walked in and saw me flagging during my run. “Just pretend you’re being chased by a big boulder, Mum,'” he said.
- Spitfire Prelude and Fugue by William Walton—I used to work for Rolls-Royce Aero, in Filton. The staff there had seen it all, and done most of it, too, but at the distinctive sound of a display Spitfire coming in for a service they’d all drop everything, and rush to the windows to watch it.
- The Great Escape (Main Theme) by Elmer Bernstein. When I first put my playlist together, this was the final track. The title says it all! Unfortunately, this collection turned out to be a couple of minutes too short when I tried it out. I needed one more track. The Magnificent Seven was too long, but
- The Dambusters March by The Central Band of the RAF is exactly the right length to complete my sessions. The speed matches the last part of my run and cool-down, then during the last moments I walk down the drive to our front gates and do my stretches. Perfect!
While I haven’t actually lost any weight through running, as long as I keep doing it regularly it stops me putting any more on. Which is progress, of a sort.
Next time: The Second Reason Why I Couldn’t Lose Weight…