Starting To Get Fit

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I’m back in St Annes today and it feels great, it’s very true that one of the best things about travelling is coming home, all those little comforts, knowing where everything is, seeing friends and family, time to chill out.  What’s not so great though is the accumulation of all those little jobs that need doing, the garden chores, the cleaning, washing, tidying etc., still all that’s done now and I get to enjoy a couple of weeks at home. Before a lot of travelling for the last two weeks of September.

I signed up at the gym today as well and for a personal trainer, Tom Bird, who’s also the gym manager.  I’ve been working hard for the last few months to establish a base level of fitness, but now that winter’s on it’s way I want to establish a solid swimming and strength training habit and I might even do some fitness classes, probably Pilates. To start this new phase off well, immediately after joining the gym I went for a swim to celebrate, which was great.

This new habit turns out to be pretty expensive though, the gym membership itself is £38/month, the towels cost £75/year, 10 sessions with a personal trainer £200.  That’s a total of £731, which will probably top £1000 by the time I’m finished with a few massages and additional personal trainer sessions.  Still now’s the time to build the habits and to get strong enough to avoid injury.

I’ve been thinking about my targets for the gym session and I’d like to be able to swim two miles, run two miles, cycle 50 miles, do 10 pulls ups, 50 press-ups, bench-press my own weight and get down to a 32” waist before Christmas, that will mean that I’ve achieved my goal of getting back to my 25 year old level of fitness.

I’ve also been repacking my travel bags, I really like to have bags pre-packed with all of my gear, so there’s no excuse for not travelling, today it was the turn of my ultra-light day bag and my four day bag, it’s a good feeling. My St Annes day pack now has my ultra-light gym kit in it permanently so whenever I feel like it I can pop in.  My plan though is to be more structured and to swim most mornings and go to the gym, 2-3 days a week for strength training.

The rest of the day (apart from Caffe Nero time) has been spent cleaning, which is really therapeutic, to start with a relatively messy house and finish an hour later with all the basics clean and tidy is real progress.  I’ve always enjoyed a good clean up, from when I was a teenager I liked to keep my bedroom well organised, nowadays my OCD is such that I can’t really even relax in a messy room.

Debbie and Anna were nowhere to be found when I got home today and I later found out they had gone out for a meal with Thom’s grandparents, for some reason that really annoyed me Anna/Debbie hadn’t thought to invite me, this is the second time in as many months, the first time they went to a vegetarian restaurant (I don’t like vege food) so that was a reasonable excuse, but this time they went to a cafe in Lytham, quite sad.  Anyway there’s always a lesson to be learned in life, no matter how much it hurts at the time.

Steve Richards

I'm retired from work as a business and IT strategist. now I'm travelling, hiking, cycling, swimming, reading, gardening, learning, writing this blog and generally enjoying good times with friends and family

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