Dec 8, 2002
On Fitness
Words I never thought I’d hear myself say: I miss going to the gym. I learnt so much there.
I used to think it was the perfect place to study – all the way through college and uni and my MA, I would head over most evenings at about eightish, prop up my book (Nietsche, Kant, Sexual Objectivism in Anthropology, 500 Spanish Verbs – books so dull that I simply couldn’t bring myself to read at any other time, because there would always be something better, more interesting, more active to do) on the handlebars of the stationary bike, and ride twenty miles while reading about man and superman or radical changing verbs.
Later, I progressed onto paying people (undergrads, gullible freshers) to record themselves reading chapters of the same books, or chuntering away in Spanish, to which I could then listen while doing bench-presses or whatever…
And then I discovered the joy of running through a forest, and was spoilt forever. Springy floor, soft blanket of pine needles and earth, clear path through the trees, sound of leaves falling or rain in the treetops, high above. Running on a Rotex was never the same. And as for city streets….
The same is true of cycling – backwoods trails or gentle pottering along country roads has spoiled me for city riding, and certainly made me tire of the stationary bike. Who wants to ride nowhere, working up a sweat, watching your world stay stagnant, ending up where you started? Not me.
Swimming, too has been spoilt. The Holmes Place pool is too chlorinated and stings my eyes – and the relentless ploughing up and down of serious swimmers desperate to get in forty laps before their two o’clock meeting is offputting. I’ve been spoilt forever by wading out into the surprisingly warm waters of Port Ban or Market Bay at sunset, spreading the clear water with my arms, shimmering the incandescent sunset into the ripples, or completing long lazy laps of the crystal blue bay in Sifnos as the Greek sun beats down. No pool can possibly compare.
What I learnt in the gym was not how to correctly conjugate caer or the difference between a posteriori and a priori knowledge. I learnt to think of my body in terms of function rather than form.
Ask me what my favourite bit of my body is, and I’ll tell you. Hands, because they let me tinker and type and create. Mouth, because it lets me communicate, taste, love. Ears, because they open the world of music to me. Feet, because they let me explore. Function. Not form.
It’s about physical potential and power in the raw sense. Can you run for the bus? Can you fix things? Can you communicate? Can you use your body to live, laugh, love to the full? That’s what’s important to me. More important that BMI or callipers or whatnot, more important than doctors’ charts or arbitrary numbers. Potential, not perfection.
I could get fit again. I just need the right environment the right context, the right lifestyle. Trust me, the life of the passionate noomeejahoor is not compatible with jogging around Hampstead Heath at dawn. Unfortunately.
