Aquafit advice

OK. So I started with the jogging and then demoted to power-walking and now I’ve resorted to swimming and, wait for it, Aquafit! Although my chum and I are the average age of the local ‘great granny’ at forty-something, we are the youngest attendees by one hundred years each. We’ve been going every week this year, and are quite enjoying it, so I thought I’d give my female readers some advice. (Sorry if it sounds sexist, and although facially it’s hard to tell the difference, I believe all the attendees at the local class are women).

Tips for women doing Aquafit;

·         Position yourself as far back into the deeper water as possible. With an average class age of ninety, they’re not called Tena Ladies for nothing.  Dilution is paramount.

·         If you are ‘well-endowed’ don’t wear a swimsuit. Wear a wet-suit, or a burkini instead. Unless, with all that bobbing, you want your ‘natural buoyancy aids’ to be magnetically attracted to your chin for the entire class.

·         Don’t get too close to the marking-off rope that segregates the class from the rest of the pool, or you might accidently kick one of the old men who congregate there during the ‘Ladies Aquafit’ class.

·         Get close to the marking-off rope that segregates the class from the rest of the pool, so you can ‘accidently’ kick one of the old men who congregate there during the ‘Ladies Aquafit’ class.

·         Prepare for an ego boost. You’ll feel smug knowing there will be someone there with wrinklier thighs or forearms than you.

·         Prepare for a knock in your self-esteem. Some of those grannies, though one hundred years older, are also one hundred times fitter than you.

·         The fun of doing a ‘Marilyn Monroe’ when you’re wearing a swimsuit with an attached skirt wears off after you have to do it 30 times in five minutes.

·         Even if you have the entire pool to yourself, a poor, unsuspecting, old woman will appear by your side  AFTER you’ve accidently hit her with the buoyant dumbells

·         The fitness instructor WILL tease you by showing you the moves at impossibly high speed, because she isn’t in the water. And she’ll urge you to go faster. Use your best anger management skills to stop yourself pouncing out of the pool with the intention of throwing her in shouting, “Resistance! See what it’s like to deal with resistance, Bitch!”

And what about the weather? The wind lashing icy rain against our faces.

That's my excuse for not eating light food this month.

 

Shakira

You may have guessed from my silence on the blog-front, the whole exercise/jogging thingy isn't going all that well. Despite this, I've surprisingly still managed to lose an additional half stone. (Still scratching head over this).

It started off with all the best intentions, twice a week, circuiting the local beauty spot with my heavy bulbous mass, in relative peace, bar the odd cajouling from the birdlife. And then came the stabbing pain in my heel and I assumed it was just my achilles. So I kept running. And then I started to nark off the other joggers in the running group because I'd start well, and run quite fast until time to turn around, and then as the pain got worse I'd slow down and they'd still be running quite fast, and I'd lose sight of them and eventually the jog leader would dutifully, but very reluctantly, have to turn back to tow me home.

So I went to the chiropodist, and she told me, get this, the fatty parts of my heel, yes, the FATTY parts of my heel, are inflamed. So the old self-esteem has taken a knock knowing I'm SO big, even my heels are deemed obese.
And I have new insoles and big shoes that make me look like I'm in a pantomime.

Also I've been on holiday. In Hurghada, Egypt. Where cheesey locals continuously called me 'Shakira'. I have absolutely no idea why, I mean Shakira does not have ginger hair and blue eyes, and I don't know about you, but I can't let Shakira's name pass now without thinking of Karen Dunbar's irreverent impression 

 it still cracks me up. Hmm, just realised it may have been my arse. You can't miss it. It blocks out the light.

So now it's the New Year. 2013. And as for resolutions?

To starve myself until I do actually look like Shakira? That's as likely as Shakira joining a convent.

To exercise just a little more? To eat a little less?

The jury's out on those ones.

However, I do want to wish you all health, happiness and prosperity in 2013 and may it be the best year you've ever had.

Immy x




 

Discharged

Five years.
Five years on from my melanoma, and I've had my last all-clear and been officially ex-communicated from Dermy-tology. And, boy, what a relief. Honestly, I knew it was coming coz other than fresh wrinkles deeper than my husband's pockets, and pores so large you can see them from the Curiosity rover on Mars, I haven't had much in the way of scariness on my skin.
The only scarey growth  (because I had my lymph glands removed) is my left ankle, now named Penn...

 

 

(It's the rug under my legs that's hairy. Honestly.)

 

In fairness, I've been let off pretty lightly. My legs would never have won a competition before, and they don't swell up that much. And it's not as if I'd be showing them off in our Scottish climate anyway.

 

So to summarise - I'm feeling pretty darn delighted.

Cautious optimism

I'm still at it! Kind of.

At my first jog a couple of weeks ago, my instructor suggested an early morning bootcamp for 'only' two thousand weeks, (that's what it felt like) and as an incentive, whoever lost the most weight/inches won six months fitness membership.
And of course I thought I'm mega-motivated and sure I'll easily lose a stone in that fortnight, and win the membership and all the more help for losing these michelin tyres. And that's how it all started off.
At half past five, my alarm would go off and hubby would still have to cajole me out of the bed, so I'd roll out, throw on my body shaping pants with 'tenor' ladies, jogging bottoms, two bras, and much-too-small tee-shirt and make my way to the arena of doom.
Believe it or not, I actually enjoyed the circuit training, where if a really tortuous exercise came up, you knew it would only last a minute. Though school memories came flooding back at the end of each session, when I was the very last picked for the team because of my inevitable failures on the pitch.
Two days before the last session, I weighed myself and I had lost ten pounds! Delighted.
But then it all went tits up.
We had friends staying and we all visited Glasgow for the day, and they decided we should have McDonalds for lunch. Well, I didn't want to be a spoilsport so I joined in. But then things got worse. They decided to take us out for tea with their vouchers for Pizza Express. And that was the ruination of my best laid plans.
So on the last morning, I slept in, my whole body ached and the early morning midge bites on my arms from previous boot camps had made my arms scratching posts, so when hubby suggested I didn't have to go to bootcamp that morning, I leapt or should I say slept at the chance. When I got up and weighed myself, I had put on four pounds overnight! Not happy.

I am still jogging though except for Saturday morning jogs which have been replaced by teaching rugrats how to torture their mammies and daddies by skreaching a bow across fiddle strings and my shares in earplug manufacturers have quadrupled in value in only four days.

But that's another story for another time.

Will write again soon.

I've started!

Ok. Hands up. I've been a little bit complacent with updating the blog. Partly due to holidays (us going somewhere and cousins coming here) and partly because I am embarrassed to say I haven't been doing any jogging except for today. Yes. Today. This morning I officially started with the Jolly Joggers. Yay! (Trumpet fanfare) And how do I feel now? Ecstatic for starting? Smug at managing a three mile jog/walk on my first go in two years? No, unfortunately. I'm killed with the tiredness and absolutely useless for doing anything. And for some strange reason, my fingers have swollen up like inflatable dingys. Very strange. However, at least I've started, and to quote D:ream vernacular - 'Things can only get better.'

Told you I was ill...

I'm on the computer because the old nerves are killing me - I just can't watch Murray in the final - too scared of jinxing him - so I'm taking it out on my blog.
After a few weeks feeling lethargic and with various egg sized lumps disappearing and reappearing, I went to the doctor, and I'm delighted to say I've got glandular fever! Yes, I've got a great excuse for my not jogging, well I believe probably good enough, and thankfully nothing worse.
Despite all this however, I have been swimming and hill-climbing up in the north of Scotland last week on holiday, enjoying the sunshine (yes - we did have a few days of it) and chillaxing with hubby and the cub.
Back to the writing now with a vengeance though, so I'll sign off, and take a wee peek at Murray's progress before I air my notebook.

Review - Electric Man Movie

This is a fast-paced comedy about the race for possession of a valuable first-edition comic. For officianados of Scottish Film, it reminded me a little of Restless Natives with some Local Hero moments. Some of the twists in the plot, stunts and camera work were superb, with some real laugh-out-loud guffaws, and the fact it wasn't over-produced made it refreshingly real. It isn't trying to be Hollywood, just some good fun escapism.
Go, see and enjoy.