No Targets

I signed up to the gym last night. There’s something about that sentence that sounds quite ludicrous, coming from me. Perhaps even desperate. If you read back this blog you’ll see numerous attempts to start something virtuous or project-like and more often than not, failing to see them through. I started running last summer to train for a half marathon in September. That didn’t happen – I ended up doing about six or seven three mile runs and then that was it. I signed up to the National Novel Writing Month last November, whereby I committed to writing fifty thousand words in thirty days. I managed twelve thousand in that time (I am, however, continuing with that endeavour and hope to have it finished by the end of the year. Oh shit, I wasn’t going to tell anyone that. Damn).

So it is with this in mind that I am not setting myself any targets for this particular activity. You could say this is defeatist, I say realist. I know, for example, if I say I MUST GO FOUR TIMES A WEEK that I will end up going five times the first week and then once or twice the next couple of weeks and then once or twice a month after that. So therefore, I set myself no timetable. I will go when I want to go. Neither have I set any weight loss or fitness targets. Ideally, I’d like to look good for the summer, lose a bit of the beer gut, but nothing specific. I’m just going to improve my health/lifestyle a bit, and to use the time in the evenings when I am usually bored a little bit more productively.

And there are going to be more of those times in the next few weeks as I’m cutting out the midweek boozing. I’m sad to do it, but it needs to be done – both from a financial standpoint and a health one. The best nights in Reading in my experience have tended to be Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, but I can’t justify doing it anymore. I suffer at work the next day, I’m constantly tired, I feel like my insides are caked with filth and debauchery and I just can’t afford it. It helps that Chris seems to have come to the same idea at the same time as me, and Ally never really hit it that hard in the week anyway, so it’s good to have some support. Chris and Ally, along with Beehead, are also members at the gym I’ve joined, so it will become more of a social event than just a painful one.

Last night was painful. I did twenty minutes on the weird walker thing, where you step up and down and grab onto the big sticks. Then I did fifteen minutes on a bike that went nowhere, and then I did some pushy-pushy things on a machine that made my arms feel like someone was shaking them uncontrollably from side to side. I’ll get the hang of the technical terms after a while I’m sure. Not that I’m setting myself a target for that. No targets.

I’m not even targeting going again tonight, although I want to. So maybe I will?