50 Minutes Of Hell

Nothing on TV so thought I’d do something productive
instead to (hopefully) enlighten and inspire you to
get up of your butt and do some exercise when you’ve
finished reading this.

So for the last 2 months I’ve been out of the pool and
generally eating, chilling, celebrating birthdays,
and enjoying myself.

I’ve let things slip.

Badly!

Eating hasn’t been up to what I’d like to call ‘a
good standard’.

My training regime had pretty much gone out the
window since I spent two weeks in Turkey.

Plus, not swimming or water polo training through the
summer (due to of season) meant that my CV/LUNGS/condition
felt like a rusty engine.

Tonight was my first official swimming ‘set’ after
2 months of doing, not a lot.

My initial thoughts were not to go and forget
swimming because I may as well give up. I’m unfit
compared to how I was 2 months ago and I certainly
didn’t want to put myself through what I was labelling
as 50 minutes of hell in a swimming pool.

But I went…

And swam…

All I wanted to do was get out, go home and eat something
tasty.

I’ve been up since 5:45am - swim training was at 8:30pm
so my mind and body were both saying “just go home
fatty you don’t need to get fit.”

So what did I do? I dragged my lazy ass to stokewood
and got on with it.

No one else was going to do it for me.

I didn’t listen to ‘the voice’ because if I didn’t go
tonight, I probably wouldn’t have gone training next
week or the week after.

You see, I got comfortable with the way of life which
wasn’t really leading me to fulfil each day as I wanted.

I’ve been telling myself stories about ‘how I feel fine
exercise can wait another week’ and the weeks got
longer and longer.

I’ve not really been pushing myself physically for the
last 2 months and getting in the pool to train was the
LAST thing I wanted to do because I knew how much
hard work it was going to be.

And it was HARD.

87 lengths of butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke
and frontcrawl.

Arms felt like noodles. Zero power in my stroke.
Lungs felt like I’d been smoking 20 a day.

But the moment I woke up this morning I knew today was the
day to start actioning my needs (not monday) and stop
putting my fitness goals at the bottom of the ‘to do’
list and simply get on with it.

And let me tell you… after I finished training, I knew I
got over THE hardest part of starting OR getting back
into exercise after a period of time off.

So if you’re still reading and wanting to get back into
fitness.

Feel the fear and do it anyway because you know you’re
going to feel better for it after.

Trust me, I’ve been going through the cycle for years
now…

…and it never changes.

It only gets harder to get started.

MaNgO ‘I got your back’ Alptekin

This was back us in June 2015