My Exercise Career

      Students who suffer from an acute aversion to effort are now privileged to consult The world’s best thin books: what to read when your book report is due tomorrow by Joni Richards Bodart. (I realize that book reporters have been on to this ploy for eons, but thanks to Ms. Bodart, it now has some competent direction.)

      Even though this particular item will never do me any good because a) I haven’t been a student in years and years and b) I love to read anyway, I can still feel a degree of kinship with the concept, if not the particular application. Up until 1993, had a teacher assigned a paper on “My Favorite Sport” or “How I Exercise”, my response would, of necessity, have been simply to hand in several blank sheets of paper.

      Throughout childhood and adolescence, I could have put all the athletic inclinations I ever had in a locket and worn it around my neck. I liked swimming, but most very young children do, and as I got older my interest waned. When thirteen or so, I was signed up for golf instruction by my parents (group sessions, not individual – way too foolhardy) at our country club. For who knows what reason, I still remember the golf pro’s name: Fred Campbell. By this age, I had grasped that golf was a rather sophisticated, adult game, and when the initial lesson was over, I hopefully hauled my bag of borrowed clubs to the first tee. Twenty-six minutes later my golfing career was fini, and back at the clubhouse I settled in with a good book, doing what I did best.

      In junior and senior high school, I regarded PE and everything connected as a hairshirt. Located under the stadium, the locker rooms, boys’ and girls’, were dank, smelly dungeons that no sane person would have entered, let alone remained in, save under duress. Undressing and then dressing again in the middle of the day struck me as imbecilic in any case, but having to do it where drug-resistant life forms were evolving was downright reckless and something for the authorities to look into.

      Nonetheless, as a perfunctory nod towards hygiene, we were required to take home our gym suits every Friday for laundering and ironing and were inspected every Monday for same. Failure to comply caused points to be deducted from your grade. Invariably, on Sunday nights, I would be drifting off into the sleep of the just (conscientious students are allowed to do that) when, just before the final descent into peaceful oblivion, I would remember that my outfit, board-stiff with dried perspiration, was still standing up all by itself next to the washing machine.

      In college, I took riding because I like animals and because it allows the participant to remain seated. As soon as I began to explore the intricacies of walk, trot, canter and gallop, I realized too late the folly of getting one’s equine information from watching horses under contract to Disney. These run smoothly as silk, their wondrous legs hardly ever seeming to touch the profane earth while the undisturbed rider may do needlepoint or calligraphy if so inclined. The fearsome reality can be summed up in two words: horses stumble. A whole lot. During my first time out, I don’t think I had been atop Applesauce seventeen seconds before he took a partial header into the churned up earth of the ring, and from that moment on my optimism evaporated and was replaced by nightmarish visions of having him do a full header next time and squash me underneath like a Japanese lantern. I wondered if I would lose consciousness before or after the sound of my leg bone snapping like a dry twig. When the next semester rolled around, I signed up for boating and canoeing, the only other sit-down activity offered.

      It goes without saying, I suppose, that immediately after graduation my exercise career, puny as it always had been, finally expired altogether and was laid to rest with very little mourning on my part. Never again would I be required to do sit-ups or push-ups, play softball or basketball or volleyball or soccer or learn their rules, or put on skimpy outfits that emphasized how less-than-perfect my figure was.  

      Some are born indolent, some achieve indolence, and some have indolence thrust upon them. For the next decade or two, I mulled over which category I properly belonged to and finally concluded that it mattered not. My fitness program consisted of the blank sheets of paper already referred to, also known as The Great Hiatus. Because I was blessed with superior health, the credit for which went entirely to youth and good genes, my short-lived efforts at fitness would occur only after being periodically frightened off the sofa by reading that lack of exercise causes cancer, or something. I remember a resolution to swim one hundred laps every weekend that sank without a trace. I recall a gym membership that flattened my wallet but not my stomach. Nothing worked out, especially not me.

      In my mid-thirties, I bought a second-hand bicycle from a member of my church for thirty-five dollars, scrubbed off the rusty spots with steel wool, and began periodic forays into the vast natural domain. In addition to my full-time job, I was working on a master’s degree at the time, and being cooped up indoors almost constantly got to be more than even I could stand. The bike rides were a wonderful relief, both physically and psychologically. When I wanted a change of scenery from my usual routes, I would heft the bike into my station wagon and drive miles out into the country. Or I would leave the bicycle at home and take my three basset hounds, Clemmie, Zandy and Lulu, for walks in the woods. Eventually the treks got longer, and provided we began early enough we might not return for hours.  

      On Easter Monday, 1993, I took the day off from work and drove to a semi-rural area some seven or eight miles from my house. After locking the car in a safe, unobtrusive spot and putting the extra key in my pocket, I tightened the laces of my brand new Nikes, adjusted the straps of my brand new sports bra and began to run. And run. Up one path and down another. Through the woods this time, along a paved road the next. Now uphill, now level, now down. I ran and ran and discovered, to my utter astonishment, that I liked it. Not displeased with this first effort, I made all kinds of promises to continue while not really believing that I would.

      But I was wrong. Over the next couple of years, I ran, on average, three to four times a week. At first, my bewildered calf muscles hurt like hell, but in a surprisingly short time they got used to it.

      It would delightful to report that my weight fell twenty pounds, my IQ rose twenty points, and my hair went back to its original color. In a donkey’s suitcase. Currently, I do not run as regularly as before, but there is a certain comfort, perhaps false, in knowing that I could reprise my old schedule at any time.

      Noble subjects impart noble lessons, and it is beholden on me to close with a moralistic coda along the lines of “What I Have Learned From Running”. I shall not disappoint.  

           WHAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM RUNNING 

1.    Unless they are old and arthritic (and in that case will have far too much sense to leave home in the first place), slow dogs can still run circles around fast people. Concentric circles. Furthermore, they are willing to put their normally sweet dispositions on hold for a bit and rub it in. When I finally approach the homestead red-faced, sweating and gasping for breath, they have long since arrived and are stretched out on the porch, giving every appearance of death. But as soon as I pass, they magically return to life and raise their heads just far enough to shoot me that what-the-hell-kept-you look.