cyclecise

I cycled into work today for the second time this year. I have every intention of trying to sustain this throughout the summer; I did a whole year a couple of years back, but as I sit here now gasping for air having nearly shat myself cycling up a short 1 in 10 hill I’m not only dreading the ride home but the potential of tomorrow mornings too.

Exercise is fundamentally wrong and highlights the massive flaw in the design of the human. The pleasurable things in life, drinking, smoking, taking drugs, consequence-free casual sex and indeed being a lazy wanker sprawled in front of high tech free stuff, are all frowned upon by the heart, liver, lungs and if unfortunate, the penis (or fanny, ladies). Exercise which is supposedly good for you is fucking horrible, it involves overly complicated acts of inertia that are frankly painful, undignified and, if one gets it wrong, lead to serious injury or even death, having said that is it just me or does anyone else get a kick out of reading about an ex-jogger, every cloud and all that.

As a child running about like a mental is ace, it’s not something one chooses to avoid (unless the kid is fat or disabled and even in these cases the desire to belt about may still be intact) in fact it’s something that can be perceived as ‘fun’ in addition to being good for growing bodies. That’s great. But as a child I don’t recall drinking 7 pints of Stella, smoking myself into a liquid spaceship and preparing to indulge in some protection free anal with some tart I’ve met in a bar. I’m not saying I didn’t do these things I just don’t remember it.

My point is this, surely it’s now as adults when we are deliberately damaging our bodies in order to enjoy our lives that we need the default ‘exercise is fun’ thing we had as kids? Doubtless there may be one or two people reading this that do abstain from all forms of narcotic stimulation, indeed, those that get their little endorphin kicks from doing something involving moving energetically, reading this in bemusement, making judgement, sneering, even… Well, good luck to you, really. Just stay away from children okay, you’ve been warned once already.

It’s a glorious spring morning over here in London, actually, in spite of the pain resulting in being privy to using my limbs and muscles to propel myself forth on the velocipede I was dimly aware of having some sort of contact with the natural world about me, as opposed to my usual bloody fast journey into work on board the Triumph. I noticed that there were pink and white blossoms on the trees, I could smell the passing woodland, watch little creatures darting in and out of the hedgerow as the low-slung sunlight twinkled off the stream by the towpath… It was, for want of a better word, ‘pleasant’. But whether it was pleasant enough to encourage a permanent future of cycling to work is hard to say.

Following a large poo I’m going to walk out into the sunshine and smoke a cigarette. I’ll ponder this matter then. Cause and effect dictates that tonight I shall have a few glasses of wine and spurn movement. If I make it in tomorrow, I’m going to take up crack.