So far all 2012 has brought me is a feeling that I’m a right sick note. I started the year with the remnants of a bad back. Rumour has it that it’s sciatica as that runs in the family (on my mother’s side) and I’ve had it before. This time it was brought on, in my medically untrained opinion, by lugging a tumble drier upstairs on Christmas Eve. Well, we have a small kitchen and we needed room for beer, you know how it is. Some things just have to make room for the greater good.
Consequently three days later I innocently raised my left leg in the shower to wash it and a snapping sound in my lower back indicated that I was to spend the no-mans-land period between Christmas and New Year waddling around awkwardly with a pained expression on my face.
Then, I get that sorted and I have a lump removed from my neck. That, as I mentioned last time, left me sore and grumpy as hell. It also left me quite dazed and I still have no feeling in my left ear but that, as I’ve discovered, is because the surgeon severed some of my nerves during the operation.
The nice lady on the NHS Direct Helpline said she “wasn’t surprised” to hear this when I called her three days after the operation as I believed that the local anaesthetic hadn’t worn off. Well I was surprised because no-one had bothered to tell me that this might be an outcome. Mind you, as regular visitors to this blog will recall, I should be thankful for small mercies as I’m lucky to have come away from that whole experience with my dignity intact, so to speak.
Now I have a third issue. At the weekend I bravely decided to return to the gym. I had been a member a couple of years ago but I’d quit as it wasn’t working for me. I was too distracted by the endless poncing about and homo-erotic grunting from the more pumped-up individuals that frequented the place, and that was just the women.
The problem was that I never had a purpose, a goal if you will. When I started running last year I knew that my aim was the Fun Run. I knew what I had to do. So that’s why this time the gym will be more regularly patronised by me.
You see, my boss at work does this thing every year at the end of June. Her and her other half, and loads of other folk, travel up to Wales, and then the Lake District, and then Scotland, and they climb three whacking great big mountains over the course of about three days. Actually it could be less than three days if I checked the itinerary, but either way it doesn’t drag out. You may have heard of other people doing it. It’s called the Three Peaks Challenge.
So, knowing that I had run a comparatively small distance she emailed me last autumn to see if I wanted another challenge. Still on a high from doing something vaguely active for charity I concluded in my mind that I would. How difficult could it be?
Fast forward a few months to last weekend and the owner of the gym, a chap called Harvey (not the one from Celebrity Fat Club, or whatever it was called) was getting me to warm up on a cross trainer for 15 minutes. For the latter half of this so-called ‘warm up’ he set the machine to replicate climbing a mountain.
Now I think I’ve got reasonably strong legs. It’s always been one of the more flattering areas of my body and was honed back in the 90s when I used to go drinking with good friends who all enjoyed trying new and exotic real ales, which led us to traipse up hill and down dale, often at speed so as to make it to the final pub by last orders, in search of a different beer. My legs have therefore had extensive training. Having said all that, I got off this cross trainer and my legs could barely support my weight any more, they had been reduced to two quivering streaks of jelly.
The punishment didn’t end there though. He then put me through the paces with some sort of kettle weight where I had to swing this weight up to eye level whilst standing and then squat down as it swings back through my legs. This for me takes some thinking as if I don’t concentrate I’ll be stood up at the wrong time and a 12kg kettle weight will wipe out my gentleman’s area, and no-one wants to see that.
Not content with this he had me climbing up a step thing whilst carrying weights, then on some weight thing where I had to tiptoe to lift it using my shoulders, then another where I was flat on my face lifting some weight behind me with my calves, and it went on. I was a sea of perspiration and pain. It was tough and made me realise that climbing these mountains may be trickier than I thought, but if I train it’ll be fine. All this will get easier.
Come Saturday, and motivated by the previous day’s activities, I went for a walk. Just a gentle 3 to 4 miles. I’d planned a route that took me via the local Adnams shop so I could pick up a couple of interesting bottles of vin rouge for a quiet evening in with the present Mrs Hayward. I’d taken a rucksack and everything.
When I returned home I realised that I was becoming stiff, and not in a good way. By the end of the evening, and despite the red wine I realised that I was limping. By the Sunday morning I couldn’t actually put weight on my left foot without howling like a wild animal. My calf muscles on my left leg were shot to ribbons. I was injured. My non-existent glittering football career was plainly over.
So, for the second time in a month, there I was waddling around in pain. Today is an improving picture but if I sit in one place for too long it takes me a couple of minutes and quite a bit of childish whimpering before I can get moving.
However, I can take something positive from this. No matter how much pain I am in, no matter how hard the training will be, at least when these muscles ache because they’ve never been used before, (not even during the heaviest of beer moves, even the legendary Salisbury-Weyhill-Andover-Winchester-Southampton move) then I am at home and can sit down. Or have a bath.
If I don't do the training then this will undoubtedly lead me to the unfortunate and somewhat embarrassing situation of becoming trapped halfway down Mount Snowdon and being airlifted to safety by an heir to the throne.
Mind you, that would be quite a story.
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