Come on Bootcamp - Let's be 'aving you!
Today is the big day and we try Bootcamp. I am dragging two very kind and lovely friends with me. It’s cold. It’s quite damp out there, and again we have the struggle of not knowing what the hell to wear. Do all women have this dilemma, or is it only me who has a desperate need to be dressed correctly for each activity I do? I envy people who are genuinely comfortable in their own skin. In fact, that’s the point of all this bloody exercise. But first, I need to get the outfit right!
This need isn't just restricted to fitness this is in all walks of life. Whenever invited somewhere new, I will always covertly try and find out what the acceptable 'style' is. and then attempt to top it. I don't know if this is (to quote America's Next Top Model) my lack of 'personal style' or simply my desire to lend myself to each differently styled event.
For example - as a child I was in the brownies. I didn't like the brownies - all that dancing around toadstools and making cups of tea for people I didn't know, just wasn't my scene. There was a fun game though, which involved everyone sitting in pairs with legs straight, feet touching with each pair being given a number. When your number was called, you had to jump over all the other legs as quickly as possible, run round, leaping over legs and be first back in your place to win! Very dangerous to the shins as I remember, but lots of fun - health and safety wasn't such a concern then.
Plus I wasn't made a pixie. All the cool kids were pixies and I vaguely remember sitting under a table, legs and arms folded refusing to skip around the frigging toadstool, sing about Brown Owl and chant the Brownie Promise to be kind and nice, till I was rightly installed as Head Pixie and not a lowly gnome. No child wants to be a gnome. Being a gnome SUCKS.
I also never managed to get a badge that wasn't a birthday one and they give those out to everyone. The point of brownies (I'm sure there are other points, but this is the only reason I could understand at the time) was to collect badges. There was the making old people cups of tea badge, the being able to cross the road safely badge, the sewing badge, the fire safety badge and lots of other fairly easy to collect badges and yet I only managed the birthday badge. Twice.
Clearly the brownies, Brown Owl, skipping, toadstools and those wonderful glittery perfect pixies were not for me but DAMN I had the uniform down. I had the brownie jogging bottoms, the brownie hoodie (in those days we would have called it a hooded sweatshirt) and I even had the brownie baseball cap. Even though my sash was bare, but for two badges with lines on them. I ROCKED IT.
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| Brownie Fashion Jessica Fox Style! |
Where was I? Oh yes! In a muddy park in the freezing cold on Sunday morning, wearing red jogging bottoms and black hoodie a la Rocky ( thought you'd want to know), whilst a cheeky Scouser gets us jogging on the spot, jumping, touching the floor, jogging again, doing the plank, jumping jacks, squatting, lunging, planking some more and then making us doing something 'they use as a torture device in Chinese prisons. Oh joy! Oh bloody marvellous, I think, as I sit shaking in a wide leg squat, with a pained expression. My face has got to be showing a 10 on the cheeky chappie's scale of 'how much this hurts'.
But, here comes the magical part. Even though I am huffing, puffing and utterly appalled by how unfit I am, there is the promise that if I keep going, keep pushing, keeping trying…it'll get easier and I'll get fitter.
Food for thought as I wash the mud, grass and possible dog shit off my red joggers.
