I was staring into my closet, glancing past the bike helmet and roller blades and running shoes, when I realized a universal truth: a person who pursues good health is actually pursuing a relationship.
No, I haven’t been snorting powdered sports drink.
Think about the one-night stands you’ve had with some unfortunate exercise. Remember that day when you went to the gym, lifted weights, realized how good you felt, and then failed to return the free weight’s calls for the next seven months? Or consider those roller blades gathering dust in your closet. They loved you after that enjoyable afternoon in the park, swooping along through the golden sunlight, your MP3 player providing just the right atmosphere. (Gosh, that Pat Benatar can sing, can’t she?) But then you ignored the blades, and they tried to forget you, growing grayer under a blanket of dust. They missed you. Yes, you hit them with your best shot.
Conversely, exercise can be a deep, shared experience. Think of the miles you’ve spent with your running shoes. Together, you have padded along shaded trails, crossed cracked pavement in the morning sun, splashed like a child through spring puddles, reveling in the mudilicious water. The shoes have supported you through 5ks and half-marathons, easy workouts and teeth-gritting sprints. Together, you have established personal bests and survived ill-planned races. But most importantly, you invested time and effort in your relationship. Beyond the certificates and medals and cheap plastic water bottles emblazoned with “Arnold’s Donut Pig-Out and 5K Ramble,” you and your shoes developed a bond of trust, and it wasn’t all based on a shared smell.
Unfortunately, given the culture we meander through, our consumer tendencies occasionally infect our relationships. Can’t spend enough time with your chosen sport? Throw money at it. Join an overpriced warehouse containing various treadmills and elipto-cycles and basketball-weightlifting-rowing machines. Go three times a month, zone out while watching blaring televisions, and try to ignore the large guy beside you grunting through all thirty reps of his fifth set. Is this the quality time you imagined with your favorite exercise? Sweat and yet another hour of staring at the television? That’s not exercise. That’s just combining couch spudliness with sadomasochism.
We should make a vow to spend more quality time with our exercise. Too often, we measure our relationship with gritted teeth, counted calories, and miles covered. But that’s like reducing a love affair to ripped theater tickets, half-empty glasses of wine, and an accountant’s tally of hours spent with Person X. I want my exercise relationship to contain laughter, support, joy, success, growth, and harmony.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go reconnect with my roller blades.
Robin Follet lives, teaches, and cartoons in North Carolina.
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November 14th, 2008 at 3:19 am
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