A bad week

Well, as the title suggests, it's a bad week (or month) for Alfie.

It all Started last week with the very sad demise of my treadmill. Muscle Man is to blame (true story) for putting too much of that 'muscle weight' into use and attempting to run at the fastest speed, on the highest incline, with a run up and leap to start! Needless to say the treadmill has died and along with it his sex life for a month - penance!!

In all seriousness though I am quite distressed that I no longer have an-in-home-exercise option! Canberra is averaging 36 degree temps at present and with Muscle Man away for work (escape became his only option) I am left with resorting to pushing Jim and Bob in my twin jogger in the heat! Without the endless excuses of yester-year, I have been dutifully running with the boys in the pram. It's a hard slog I tells ya! The weight of them combined and the pram equals close to (if not more than) 45 kilos. Add my weight to that and I may as well be running with a lead belt tied around my waist AND the weight I've lost to date. Oh and let's not forget that I should be doing so in a sauna with an overhead column heater blaring on my face and an industrial sized fan blowing directly in front of me.

Why then if I know I can run outside and can do so in less then favourable conditions, am I that upset about my faithful tready's death? Well, I guess being the year of honesty (Bugger the OX) I may as well spit it out - I have exercise agoraphobia! That's right, you read it here folks, I dislike exercising in public. It scares me. I feel like a fraud. My butt jiggles, my breathing isn't always as cool as a cucumber, I have a little muffin top spilling out my gym pants, and did I mention my bum jiggles.

I realise this all comes down to my own social perception of 'fitness' but when I envision a women jogging, I have this ingrained picture of perfection.....

A sports crop-top sitting on perky breasts with no signs of 3.8 yrs of breastfeeding and weight loss behind them, a wash board stomach with perfect muscle definition with every jogging step she takes - not a stretch-marked, saggy, 'used as an incubator' for 18 months stomach. I see slender muscled thighs which are firm and flexed with every stride she takes - I don't see thigh chaff and residual wobble as the Chariots of Fire theme song plays in the back ground whilst the remainder of thigh and cellulite catch up to the rest of the leg (all in slow motion of course). I see a perfectly taught and tiny bum, the kinda bum that hot pants were made for, not a wide load with saddle bags, cottage cheese dimples and JIGGLE.

I KNOW I can run. I KNOW I am great at running. I just don't look like a runner. This perception was confirmed yesterday when I mentioned to a colleague I'd been for a jog at 5.45am and he quipped back with "Oh, you run? I wouldn't have picked that". OUCH!

To me, my treadmill represented my right to jiggle in private. It represented my ability to set 3 pedestal fans up around me, put an episode of Desperate Housewives on and run to my hearts content in an environment where no jiggle, no breast sag, no cellulite or thigh chaff could possibly be subject to thoughts of "Oh, you run? I wouldn't have picked that".

Perhaps though, I need to look at this from another angle, and change my own perception about REAL women who run. Some of us do jiggle, some of us puff, some of us have stretch marks and exercise agoraphobia (yes, I made this terminology up) BUT at the heart of it, the main thing I NEED to remember is that some of us just get out there and do it anyway.