Freckles and endorphins

Today marked the first day of my training for my debut attempt to run a leg of the relay in the Belfast Marathon at the start of May! Better late than never....I hope! I decided that in terms of exercise, a change is as good as a rest, so I decided to make my maiden voyage into this period of exercisehood by heading down to a public running track about 10 minutes from my house. I enjoyed a good 40 minutes doing a variety of jogging, running, sprinting, walking and an assortment of cardio exercises I've learnt at Tae Kwon Do within the last year. The sun was out, I had the entire track to myself, I was completely safe from dangers of the road, uneven ground, and overexcited dogs or builders, all for the reasonable price of £2.50. You can't be bad to that.

As I drove away, with an unexpected buzz of endorphins coursing through my legs, I found myself making arrangements in my head about what my commitment was going to be to training within the next month. I already have TKD every Saturday morning, so I figured that 2 extra sessions per week would be adequate/reaslistic. Anyone who knows me at all, is aware that I am not well-known for my sporting prowess. I have never been that into sport or exercise, being quite a clumsy person with terrible core stability and a shocking lack of spatial awareness. I am much happier relaxing on the sofa or sitting in the cinema than doing anything active, although I do always enjoy a day outdoors or a bit of activity when it does end up being forced upon me. (usually in hindsight, though, rather than anticipation!)

One thing that interests me on the rare occasions when I am pondering upon the topic of sport is the seeming simplicity of the cause/effect related to it. I mean, technically, if I devoted my life to the right type of training, I could be as toned, athletic and muscular in whatever places I wanted. (well- I hope I'm still young enough for this to be the case!) I think I only realised this recently- normally there is so much about our bodies we feel we can't change- I had myself in a box as 'unsporty' and happily accepted my body as what it is, built for comfort, not speed and all that. But I think what I have realised recently is that... I could be built for speed if I really really wanted! I could turn myself into a leopard-esque, concord-paced sprinting phenomenon if I had the time and resources and was willing to put the effort in! Couldn't I??? I mean, technically it's possible, right???

I think I properly realised this element of control that lies with me for the first time a few months ago when slimming for my sister's wedding. (Yes, I really am that slow!) I had never really lost a good chunk of weight before, just a pound here or there, usually only after a brief period of illness! When I made the risky decision to choose 'The Smaller Sized Dress' (the other one being a discouragingly enormous tent!) at one of the bridesmaid's dress fittings, I suddenly became shockingly aware that I HAD to lose weight, or the zip just wouldn't come up (at least without creating a mountain of back cleavage of Quasimodo-style mmagnitude) and my sister/mother would perhap kill me! (this was not unconfirmed by a number of pep talks from both that ensued at various intervals). In the sporting realm, I've always been slighly less hideous at sprinting than any kind of long distance running, and I guess this is parallelled in the mental realm, so it figures that in the first 10 months since my sister got engaged, I managed to lose approx 2 pounds, and then with the big drive in the last 2 months I managed to lose a whopping 12 pounds. I achieved this through:
a) 'Straight Talking' from both mother and sister
b) The usefulness of having a project to put my pre-wedding nervous energy into
c)Telling myself that soup was my New Best Friend and bread was The Enemy.
d) The shortness of the period of time I would actually have to endure it for.
As well as this I had to come to the realisation that the only times I lost weight was when I felt extremely and unnaturally H.U.N.G.R.Y. Again, another cause/effect thing that I hadn't really thought through. I gradually realised I could live with hunger, I wouldn't faint or start to hallucinate, but it was just a slightly uncomfortable sensation. And I did it, yes, in those pre-Christmas weeks of Jumbo Macademias, special edition crisps, endless parties, Starbuck's flipping Gingerbread latte and cold dark days where you just want to come from work, curl up on the sofa and eat a LOT of chocolate. The zip came up, everyone was pleased and surprised and I enjoyed a fortnight of having a waist! That was very exciting! I was blatantly never going to sustain it, because of the plain fact that I just don't like being hungry! Plus the builders' bum look and regular hoisting up of trousers probably was an unhelpful distraction in the classroom and elsewhere (and not in a pleasant way, I'd imagine), and given the fact that I can't afford to replace my entire wardrobe, it's probably a good thing that this hasn't continued!

But if I KNOW that it is technically within my capabilities to turn myself into a human machine, or a girl with a bikini bod to die for, then why the heck am I not out there doing it, and benefitting from the fact that age is still (hopefully!) on my side? I guess it's not all 100% laziness, even though I admit that a good proportion of it is. It also comes down to time management- it's important to me to see friends, and I have a lot of other commitments, so it would have to take over all of those things. And if it was more important to me to be a toned and muscular babe with a 6 pack, I think that would make me into a not very nice, proud, self-obsessed person. And I think I would lose friends, and the fulfillment of the other commitments I have, extremely quickly. Plus how often would I really have the chance to flaunt myself in a bikini in this freezing country?!?

So, like everything else in life, it benefits from wisdom and balance. It is useful for me to know that I CAN improve my body and fitness levels, and I hope I'll use this knowledge to do my best to improve myself in this 'sprint' of one month until the marathon, and hopefully beyond that. I think there is something pure and helpful in thinking a little more about the cause/effect of sports and exercise, especially in this modern middle-class world we live in where so much is handed to us on a plate, and I mean that literally- most of us have very little idea of where our food even comes from. If we overspend we have a credit card or overdraft, or a parental unit to keep us from going without. Cause and effect is something I could do with reflecting about a lot more- in terms of my finances, friendships, the words I speak, my attempts at holiness, and my environmental conscience, to name but a few. To a certain extent we have control over a lot of things in our lives, and in a lot of cases it's up to us to get off our butts and make things happen.

However, as I arrived home feeling the mixture of motivation and guilt brought on by these thoughts, I looked in the mirror. FRECKLES. Oh yes. Those. Every Autumn/Winter I manage to completely forget about the full extent of my Spring/Summer frecklage, much in the same way I forget what it's like to have lighter evenings for almost half the year. And it reminded me that even though there is a good bit in our lives we can control, there is a lot - both good and bad, major and minor, that comes our way out of 'left field', whether we like it or not. In my life I have a lot of peace and comfort in knowing that God has everything in control, he reigns, that he is providential, knows me better than I know myself and cares about the tiny details, even more faithfully than my own mother does. I know others understand this through concepts of 'luck', 'fate', 'karma'- whatever our perspective I guess it's as universal as the law of gravity that in each of our lives there are things we have control over, and others that we most certainly don't. And like in everything it's up to each of us to work out the balance that keeps us from the equally harmful extremes of striving, obssessing and becoming a self-centred control freak, or sitting back fatalistically letting friendships, exercise and responsibilities fall by the wayside. And somehow being ready for the outbreaks of freckles, or unexpected bursts of endorphins that can spring unannounced into our lives at any point.