we moved to the new studio at the beginning of this year and one of the other actors discovered a boxing gym less than 1km down the road. he was so enthusiastic that he managed to rope in a number of people to check it out with him. having done lots of tae-bo and taught a version of it when i lived in l.a., i was keen to give it a bash, so to speak, but seeing that i had employed a trainer the day after i got back from doing survivor, i never got there. it took me about 9 months to realize that serious weight-lifting, combined with a recent penchant for apple-ciders, didn’t give me the body i wanted (let’s be content with a little bit of understatement here and leave it at that), so i decided i’d head over to the boxing gym.

2 kicking-my-butt-sideways-into-infinity-sessions later, i got sick with the dreadful flu that felled everyone and spent the next month dying – or at least feeling like i was. i could barely walk 3 steps without doing a serious imitation of the wolf desperate for some other white meat on the dinner menu! huff. puff! finally, last week, i was well enough to (reluctantly) make it back to the industrial building on maria rd, climb the stairs to the 3rd floor and once again, get tangled up in the skipping rope which seems to be my arch nemesis. there’s a timer that goes off and you’re supposed to skip for 4 minutes. hah! 10 seconds in the cramping in the calves start. all kinds of bits bob and jiggle and depending on the time of month, and if you’re me, you wish you could take your hands off the skipping rope handles and cradle your seriously swollen, sore mammaries instead.  i probably manage one minute of skipping before i start flagellating myself. 1 minute out of 4 – all of 25%!

i look around the room where the swish of the rope slices the air as a nimble-footed young adonis blithely reminds me that i never appreciated the many feats my 20 yr younger body was capable of. i just wish i’d discovered my athleticism earlier. if there’d been any kind of track and field program at our schools when i was a learner, i might have been a good track athlete. i remember running the 800m with hardly any training at one of our sports days when i was about 12 and not doing badly, but there was no athletic program.

anyway, good thing one of my mantras is, “it’s never too late”.

despite being distracted by the swish of rope and thwap of gloves on body-bags, i spy on the other side of the ring in the centre of the room: a treadmill. hallelujah! i can do a treadmill! this morning i get on the treadmill which at this hour, is directly in the path of a gloriously rising, and hot, sun. 2 minutes in i, who hardly ever sweat, am  short of breath and schwitzing! i am so tempted to quit, but from my running days a few years ago, i remember this little trick: fake yourself out! fake it till you make it.  i tell myself that i only have to do this for 5 minutes. then at 5 minutes, it’s, “you’ve got this far, just do 8,”. then it’s 10 and so forth. i guess it didn’t help that a few minutes in, the guy who runs the place came and shoved 2 weights in my hands. while i was only just barely dealing with running!

anyway, i’ll cut short the whine and just say, i did it! it’s amazing how one can push one’s limits – however minutely – when you use mindpower. i’m hoping that no injury or illness or my schedule gets in the way of my fitness aspirations.