A very disheartening experience

My usual ballet class has stopped for the summer (why?) and I was encouraged by a friend to sign up for another one within reasonable travel distance. She said, "The teacher's very good but he doesn't take prisoners".

Well, the teacher might have been very good (he certainly was, and was also very kind to me) but I was absolute RUBBISH. I didn't do too badly with the barre exercises, though had to be corrected for not standing straight and holding my arm at the wrong angle, but after that it was disastrous. I hopped around like a disorientated rabbit completely out of time with the music, failing to learn the sequences of steps, partly because he took it very fast, partly because I just didn't know quite a lot of them, and then got told off (quite gently) for trying to follow one of the good dancers and not learning for myself.

As with so many of life's experiences, there's a lesson to be learnt. In this case, I think the lesson is "if you're really really bad, giving up is a reasonable option". Hmm.

But putting this firmly into the background, the Tour de France, which has been in Harrogate twice in the past two days, has been a wonderful and inspiring experience. Though terribly upsetting to see poor Mark Cavendish crash within seconds of the finish. I bet he doesn't just give up ....

More reasons for X-training

If you do the same stuff all the time it gets very, very boring. Years ago my sister decided to get fitter and did exactly the same half-mile walk every day for something like four weeks. And then stopped (well, who wouldn't?) and didn't exercise again.  She did pretty well to stick it for as long as she did.

At the moment I'm having fun at an aerobics class for those of a more mature persuasion (it's called "Baggy T-shirt", which I think is REALLY insulting and inappropriate, but there you go). Last week we had a very dishy young male teacher who divided us into two groups, the Jets and the Sharks, and made us advance towards each other kicking and punching (no actual physical contact). It definitely wasn't boring.

Running is a bit different. When you're out training, particularly alone, most of the work goes on in your head. Other runners - back me up on this please! Of course you need to work on your breathing and your leg muscles and your posture and all the rest of it, but it takes a particular mind set to get out and keep going.

If you're just starting running, a couple of things are important:

1. Don't overdo it. You may feel that you can keep going, but at first you need to build up very gradually. Otherwise you get injured or overtired, or simply fed up.
2. Remember that it will probably take ages - weeks, possibly months - before it starts to be enjoyable. And even when you've reached this point, it isn't always ...

So why do it? Good question.

X-training

I'm not convinced that what I do can really be called cross-training, but it does involve doing a number of different sorts of exercise so that if one bit of me hurts I can stop doing X and spend more time doing Y.

And at the moment, "not doing X" consists of not running because my knee hurts. Quite a lot. I had an MRI scan a few weeks ago, which worked magnificently for a time as a kind of huge noisy and very expensive placebo. My knee felt much better, and better still when the GP told me that there was a bit of damage, but that it hadn't done badly considering how old it was.

However, now it hurts again, and I suspect I won't be encouraged to have another scan. Also, doing ballet this morning, which I thought might help, didn't.

What all this is building towards to to suggest that if my usual sorts of exercise aren't helping, I can do something else. I'll go to the gym tomorrow and do stuff that doesn't stress my painful joint. Like getting weighed and drinking coffee, and just possibly something else like weights or the bicycle. Not swimming. Some people are happy with swimming, some of us hate it.

But ballet was really good fun.

Starting to feel normal again?

Dealing with injuries is wretched. Everyone knows that the sensible thing to do is take it slowly, pay attention to medical advice, don't to anything before you're sure it's safe, etc. etc. ... and it's very very boring.

Last week I went to my over-55s ballet class (which is brilliant, by the way). One of the dancers - a very good one - was recovering from major surgery and had been told not to do violent exercise for - can't remember how long, but the time period was a few days away from elapsing. She said she was sure it would be OK, and danced, beautifully and energetically, and seemed to be fine.

BUT I DON'T THINK THIS IS SENSIBLE.

For a couple of reasons:

If you ignore advice, you're an idiot and only yourself to blame if something goes wrong. This is with the proviso that you trusted the person giving you the advice in the first place. If you didn't, it makes much more sense to get advice from a (reliable) second source rather than drift ahead on the basis that things will probably be OK.

Once you get to anything like my age, everybody knows that it takes longer to heal. Some doctors, some nurses, use standing healing times for things like breaks and sprains, and this doesn't always work. So leaving a bit more time to recover probably makes sense and will probably do not harm.

Oh, but it's depressing not being able to get outside and run about. I take some inspiration from an oldish guy who went to a gym I used to go to, and who was waiting for a hip replacement. Interminably, as it seemed. He was in quite a lot of pain and getting increasingly disabled, but he kept turning up and doing upper body exercises. Said it wasn't great but it made him feel better than not doing it.

What a hero.

On a different subject, I had a great run this morning. Very slow, not very long, grey skies, a bit of rain, beautiful countryside. Then home for a fried egg on toast and plenty of coffee. You can't beat that!

Blogging again!

It's been a weird year. Moving house wasweird enough, breaking the fifth metatarsal on my left foot made it a good deal too peculiar. And I wasn't doing anything stupid, just walking downstairs.

Of course there were lessons to be learnt, one of which is don't walk round to A&E with a broken bone in your foot. It did hurt. Another is that having a broken bone is actually surprisingly tiring and you need rest and nice food.

But I turned 70 at the end of last year, which is why the new title for my blog. I'm inordinately proud of being properly officially old, and am now waiting for maturity to set in.

But enough of this. Right now I'm just trying out my latest blog and latest title. I'll get round to writing something sensible on keeping fit tomorrow morning, after the Parkrun. 5k, 9 a.m. Nice course. Trying to find a valid excuse for skyving off, but don't seem to be able to. Oh well.