Discovering My Inner Jock

Thursday, March 29, 2012 – Discovering My Inner Jock

Should I blame Elliott, or thank him?  After all, it’s his desire for frequent trips to the gym that is clearly responsible for my transformation from exercise dilettante to workout fanatic.  Okay, maybe daily sessions at the gym don’t qualify as fanaticism.  Perhaps exercise devotée would be a more accurate description.  Regardless, when I took him to the gym a week ago, I had no idea that I was about to unleash my inner jock. 

What makes this development so remarkable is that I spent my entire childhood and adolescence believing I was allergic to athletics.  I showed no talent whatsoever as far as team sports were concerned.  I invented all kinds of implausible excuses in an attempt to skip gym class.   Volleyball and basketball days sent me into a panic.  Summer camp, with its emphasis on swimming, softball, and boating, was sheer torture.  I would hide out in the woods with a book.  I simply could never comprehend the attraction athletic activities held for other people. 

There was a brief time, in my twenties, when I took tennis lessons from a pro at a club in Boston.  I could hit the ball over the net, but I never got the hang of serving.  I didn’t really care about keeping track of points, either.  When Elliott and I moved to France, we spent a couple of hours batting balls to each other on the public courts in our little village.  I think we spent more time laughing and running, however, than hitting the ball.  I haven’t picked up a tennis racket in over 25 years.  My main excursion into the world of sports occurred shortly after we moved to northern Virginia in the late 1980s.  I had always enjoyed watching figure skating on the television so I decided to take lessons at the local ice rink.  I started from the very beginning.  Over a three or four year period, I progressed from group instruction to private lessons and skated a few times a week.  That all came to an end when I started teaching full-time.  My skates are still somewhere in a closet.  One of these days, I’ll dig them out and see if I can still fit into them.

Even after I joined the gym a few years ago, my workouts were sporadic.  I’d be so exhausted at the end of the workday and so busy from my responsibilities at home that I didn’t make exercise a priority.  In addition, I had an aversion to sweat (which I’ve fortunately overcome).  Now, of course, having experienced that wonderful post-workout sensation, I realize what I’ve been missing.  I’ve discovered that a daily workout is neither a chore nor an indulgence.  It’s simply a basic necessity, like food or sleep, if I want to retain my health. 

And to demonstrate my newfound love of physical fitness, I just took the logical next step:  I got a jock-worthy haircut, one that should be easy to maintain with my new exercise routine.  

One final thought regarding exercise:  When I see runners on the neighborhood streets or on the path in the nearby wooded park, I fantasize about running outdoors at this time of year.  Do you think I could put an elliptical machine under the dogwood tree in the backyard and run a long extension cord out from the house?