I woke up this morning to the most beautiful view. As I opened my eyes and greeted the day, for the first time in a long time I didn’t see a gleaming steel contraption staring right back at me. All I saw was an expanse of oatmeal carpet, with an indentation where four steel feet used to sit…the hurt machine is gone.
It happened by pure chance. Earlier in the week one of my friends at work asked me what type of cross-trainer mine was because she was looking to buy one. Before I had chance to think about it, the words You can buy mine of you like..? jumped right out of my mouth, and with a bit of jiggery pokery the deal was done.
You know me…I never loved it. In fact I couldn’t stand it. I persevered with it, and around the time I joined the Kingdom of Pain I’d built my time up to an hour or more most days…thing is, there was never a time where my workout was done with a light heart, or any sense whatsoever that I was enjoying myself. It bored me rigid, so I learned to do it, but I never learned to love it. And don’t even get me started about the fact that this cold hard steel beast stood in the middle of my beautiful shabby chic bedroom looking stupidly out of place.
But now it’s gone, I can look back fondly. For all my moaning, it served its purpose, you know? I remember writing Buns of Steel after my first attempt at a workout, having expected it to be much easier than it was…my legs were like jelly for a week. But I kept plugging away, and slowly but surely my body started to respond. It got me off the base line and it’s a good job it did…my first session at the Kingdom of Pain almost killed me, so I can’t even imagine how things would’ve worked out if I’d rocked up there without the foundation of five months’ worth of daily cross-training under my belt.
It isn’t the first time I’ve dabbled with an expensive piece of exercise equipment for a while and then turned my back on it in pursuit of something new…you name it, and I can pretty much guarantee that one of them has crossed my threshold at some point. One thing I’ve always been really good at is talking myself into believing that this new shiny thing – whatever it happened to be – was the silver bullet which would kill my fat life dead once and for all. What I’ve never done however, is wave one off without a sense of guilt that the only real exercise has come from dusting it once in a while. This one did its job…I’ve just outgrown it.
It’s part of my story, an important part actually and I’m grateful for the way in which it helped me to get into the discipline of regular exercise, but I’ve moved on now and for me, the camaraderie, the encouragement and the sense of belonging that I’ve found at the Kingdom of Pain is making exercise enjoyable for the first time in my life. Even though it hurts…who knew! Well, you lot did actually, the wise old owls amongst you told me that would happen. I’ve just signed up for another twelve months, so the hurt machine is officially redundant.
I think the Gods of Skinny witnessed my happy dance on Saturday as I vacuumed over the expanse of oatmeal carpet where the hurt machine used to sit, and you know maybe they worried a little that I’d get complacent..? It seems too much of coincidence that God of Pain upped the ante yesterday morning by bumping me up to a whole new level of workout.
I felt like a rookie all over again, but it’s all progress, right? 🙂
