I never understood people who enjoy high-intensity exercise. Wine – yes. Films – obviously. Model trains – whatever floats your boat. But exercise? I didn’t get it. I wept on reformer pilates machines and left circuits classes halfway through under the guise of going to the toilet. I went to the park with the intention of running and instead lay down in the grass with a Cornetto. I pleaded illness – and once, the death of a fictional pet – to waive class cancellation fees. Exercise just wasn’t for me.
And it’s not as if I didn’t try. I attempted swimming and barre, power yoga and boxing – all of it hellish, not to mention inaccessibly expensive. When I walked past a certain glass-fronted gym near my flat, invariably with some sort of snack in my hand, I felt a pang of pity for the people inside – sweaty, muscled prisoners, unable to free themselves from the tyranny of the treadmill.
Unfortunately, it’s always been this way. I am innately athletically challenged – psychologically weak and unwilling to suffer for things I don’t want to do. For years I told myself that I was not the kind of person who engaged in the vapid world of physical activity. Then I started walking everywhere.
At first, it was out of necessity – I had just moved to London, was broke, lonely, and couldn’t really grasp the concept of getting the bus in the right direction. At home in Omagh, Northern Ireland, to go for a walk was to drive to a destination and then spend 40 minutes tramping through a mucky forest or doing uninspiring laps of a lake. In London, I was amazed by the ground that could be covered just by walking an hour or two from my front door: Highgate cemetery, Hampstead Heath and, if I ever fancied spectral silence at the weekend, Moorgate, with all the bankers emptied out, were all within reasonable distance. Even now, I’m winded by the feeling of freedom and wonder I experience walking from one end of the city to the other.
Discovering that I could move my body in a way that didn’t feel like some sort of gruelling punishment from God was revelatory. I mourned all the years I had spent sitting still.
These days, walking is, for me, the exercise equivalent of hiding vegetables in my mashed potatoes: suddenly I’ve covered four miles in one stretch without really noticing. In the evenings, walking 90 minutes home from work is like making peace with the day, however good, bad or unremarkable it might have been. On weekends, I factor in walking time when making plans, and enjoy each mile knowing that I have someone I’m excited to see waiting for me at the other end.
A few weeks ago, I trepidatiously joined a yoga class again after many years believing that the end (when you lie on the floor like a starfish) was the only worthwhile part. To my surprise, I didn’t have to take a break or scream at the instructor that downward dog did not count as a rest. Actually, I enjoyed it, and went back the next week and the next. But the walk there and back home was still the best part.
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