Since we last met, I’ve chalked up 3 more runs and another gym session.
I’ve avoided detailing the trips to the gym. On a superficial level at least, they’re not interesting, and nor should they be. The aims of this concentrated 60 minutes of cardio-vascular cross-training are to take some strain off my knee, to help build up under-used leg muscles, and to accelerate the delarding process. Does anyone really want to know more about my 10 x 6 minute tour of duty? No, I thought not.
So that dimension is dull, dull, dull. More interesting are the psycho-sociological aspects of the gym. Why are people there? How do users interact? Or rather, why don’t they interact? A banal answer to that last one is that in the gym I attend, there aren’t many users. Or if there are, they tend not to be there when I am. I’m often there on my own. It’s the third best thing about the place, after its propinquity and cheapness.
I’ve experienced gym fervour many times in the past, but this stretch is different. The current spell has lasted 31 days now, and 14 of those have witnessed trips to the gym. (Just to complete the stats, I’ll add that another 9 days have included a run, with 8 rest days interspersed.) This is remarkable for me. My eagerness normally fades after 3 visits. There’s something about the sterility of these places that sucks the spirit, until you conclude that going to the gym is like visiting yourself in hospital.
But this time, I seem to have overcome that. I’ve grown to appreciate the relative solitude of the gym. Regardless of which piece of equipment I’m using, a treadmill mentality descends, and lends itself to a rather pleasing sense of solitary suffering. It’s an inward-looking, self-contained experience; one without spectators, or any reference to the outside world. It’s like being in a tumble drier (and yes, I speak from drunken experience). It’s a lot noisier and more frantic in there than it seems from the outside. This goes not just for the gym itself, but each individual session on a piece of equipment. It’s an intensely personal, private battle. There is no social life to speak of in the gym, so other people are strangely incidental: they rarely drift beyond the status of blurred object, a suspicion of colour at the periphery of my vision, interesting only because they impede my seclusion, just as I must impede theirs.
Three runs to record: two 5 milers along the sodden towpath (Sunday and today), and interspersed, a painful, post-gardening 3½ miler round the block – my old stamping ground. None of these outings was perfect, but all retaught me things I’d forgotten.
The two canalside fives were bogged down by technology. I recently won a Flip video camera. A handy little device that takes good quality video, but is perhaps let down by it being battery-only. I took it with me on both towpath trots, but spent too much time and energy fiddling with it. I thought I’d hit on a good idea on Sunday, by tucking it into my water-belt so that the lens peeked out over the top; but I didn’t get the angle right, and ended up with 20 minutes of puddled mud paths, and little else. Today I adopted a different approach, and hand-held it for a few bursts. Just as I returned to the car, the battery expired, so I’ve not been able to view what I’d shot. I’ll try to rectify this over the next few days, and post a link. (Cynics tempted to recall my chequered history with video, need to know that the Flip comes with an integral USB widget that plugs straight into your PC for easy download.)
A whole new RC world may be about to open up – and very possibly swallow me…
