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.