Exercise is fun?

Don't you find that the moment someone says 'you should do this, you should do that', that immediately, even if you were not viscerally against it, you would resent the bossing about and therefore do nothing?

This is how it is with exercise and me. I have nothing particular against exercise. It's a bit of a drag, let's face it, but I do feel good afterwards. The trouble is, since we've been told we should be exercising for 20mins 3 times a week, my already weak enthusiasm just petered out completely.

It went negative when my TWDB told me the advice now is one hour three times a week. Dream on, I say.

Last Sunday, he wanted us to take the bikes and do some cycling. I entertained the idea theoretically as a good one, but in practice all I wanted to do was fart about. In the end, with much cajoling, I put together a picnic (including wine - always a good way to encourage me!), we got the bikes inside and on the car, and I drove us all to Carnon's fishermen's cottages.

They are precariously (with global warming's threat of rising water) planted on land betwixt lagoon and canal, with fabulous views over another lagoon towards the Cevennes in the distance, on a clear day.

The canal path has two main advantages: 1) it's flat; 2) it's off-road. You cycle along in peace and quiet, water on both sides and no one to get in the way. For the exercise-allergic, the ride does help to reconcile you to the concept of off-yer-butt muscular exertion. It's about 3km to Palavas where we left the canal and cycled over to the beach for our picnic.

We had all brought our cossies, but I don't really like swimming. Water is wet and when I'm dry and warm, the last thing I want to do is get cold and wet. Still, it was very warm so I was quite happy to dabble my toes and cool off. The water was not that warm even in the cunningly created little bays that enable tiny children to play in the water (supervised) safely.

Boys don't do toe-dabbling so they were in the water splashing, fighting, swimming and egging me on further in. I then found myself being manhandled (yum) by my TWDB and, in order to avoid being thrown in, had to negotiate my way to an agreement - I would swim, but IN MY OWN TIME!

I couldn't sneak out and renege on the agreement either because my progress was closely monitored by 3 pairs of eyes with muscle superpower at the ready. I braced myself for the shock of cold, and plunged in, swam about a bit, snuggled with my TWDB and then headed out to dry off and warm up on the towel.

We stayed all afternoon, having left the suncream in the car, and cycled back positively glowing although not solely with health...

Today, I'm signing us all up again at the tennis club. Last year we made it down there no more than three times, and I played with my TWDB once. Hopefully this year we can do better; it would not be difficult!

Exercise is such an effort though *yawn*.