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I managed to get to the gym for the first time in 2021 - I am not sure how many months I have paid for this year due to lockdown, but this one session has cost me at least £300. But I see it as more of a charity for David Lloyd to make up for him being the less attractive Lloyd brother and never getting to snog (as far as I know) Chris Evert.
I was back to Body Pump,
which I did a couple of times in early 2020 and this time I was the only man in the room, apart from the beefy instructor. Was he the reason women were flocking to the class? If so, I think they might have been barking up the wrong tree.
I don't really understand why men aren't into Body Pump. It's a decent work out, but obviously doing it all to music makes it seem a bit less macho than being on the gym floor wearing gloves and belts and spotting for your muscly mates and then kissing them in the showers. The weights are a little lighter in body pump (though the choice of how heavy they go is yours) but you don't really get any recovery time at all and some of the exercises really test your stamina and strength, so it's pretty intense.
Although the tendons in my heel are still sore, none of this seemed to exacerbate things and I am hopeful that I won't have damaged myself so much that I can't exercise for weeks and turn back into a blob.
My eyesight has become considerably worse during lockdown. It might have degraded anyway, but I think it's happening faster. I had my eyes tested six months ago and I think things have already declined, but I noticed how bad things are without my glasses when I attempted to open my combination lock. I basically had to work through all 9999 options before I could get my stuff as the numbers were a blur, but my glasses were locked inside and you can't ask for help on this, lest you give away your number (which there's a good chance is probably also your bank card PIN). I felt like Donald Pleasence in the Great Escape. Next time I will have to set the lock to be a certain number of turns away from the combination so I can pretend I can see it perfectly.
All the body pumping in the world can't stop the inevitable toboggan ride to decrepitude and death.
But my plan to go to a class straight after dropping the kids off at school worked quite well. I did a bit of work in the cafe before heading home for lunch and this afternoon made some headway on the new book and also managed to book a second guest for the 29th November bonus RHLSTP. Joining Fringe Legend, Chris Lynam will be podcaster and actor Margaret Cabourn-Smith from Do The Right Thing and much more. It's going to be a fun (almost) Christmas celebration of RHLSTP and numbers are limited, so please come on down if you're in London that night. Also you can celebrate me carrying on with the podcast in a year that threatened to stop me doing them (or anything else).
Tickets here.
