I don't run. This is no secret. I don't like the feel of running, the bouncing, the shortness of breath I get, any of it. Cycling, fine. Swimming, fine. Running, not on your nelly.
Things are changing though. After a lot of persuasion my housemate finally convinced me to go on a short jog with her. And... I didn't hate it. I didn't love it either, but it was ok, nobody died, not even me. This kind of punctuates a long process I've been going through of realising that maybe most of the reason I don't think of myself as sporty comes down to what's been going on in my head rather than my actual ability...
High school. It screws up even the best of us in special ways we don't realise until years later. For me, one of the things it did was create a massive dichotomy in my head - that you were either a 'Sporty Person' or a 'Clever Person'. The sporty people were cool, and even if you happened to be sporty and clever, the sportiness still became what you were known for. I was actually bullied through lower education for being a 'know-it'all' (because I actually knew the answers to things! Shock, horror!) and for enjoying learning.
I don't think I was even that bad at sports, but I didn't start to enjoy it until the elite sportspeople were skimmed off the top to do GCSEs and the rest of us were lumped together in a group. Suddenly the grades didn't matter any more. The pressure was off and we could just have fun. And we did! They let us try basketball, and rugby, which I loved (there was a gender divide in my high school. Boys did basketball and rugby. Girls did netball and dance *shudders*). Seriously, rubgy. If only I'd known about it sooner.
Anyway, I left high school, went into higher education, because I was clever, and was never required to do sports again. But this dichotomy stuck with me. I was a Clever, not a Sporty.
In the last few years this has started to change. I discovered how much I love being outdoors, which inevitably involves some level of walking or cycling. I got a job in my home town but had no allotted parking space, so I started cycling the 20mins and discovered how much more awake I was on arrival than I had ever been after my old 1hr commute by car. A friend of mine took me bouldering, which is like rock climbing but with a lower wall, no pesky ropes, and a big squishy mat to fall onto, so I did that a few times. I'd do activities to hang out with friends, which meant... being active. It sort of snuck up on me.
And then came Roller Derby.
I was at the least-fit end of the spectrum in our group, but it was just so fun that I kept coming back. Even on the days when it wasn't fun, and everything hurt, and I sucked, it was... still pretty fun. In hindsight, I realise that I was doing a decent amount of exercise regularly once a week, but I never thought of it that way.
I call it 'Incidental Exercise'. I doubt I'll ever be one of those people who genuinely enjoys working out for its own sake, but often there will be something I want to do, or somewhere I want to do, that exercises me by accident. I walked Kinderscout in the Peak District with a friend just because I wanted to. I've just come back from walking Hadrian's Wall with my Mum - we were doing anywhere between 8 and 16 miles of walking each day for five days in a row. Last night I went for a bike ride that ended up being 12 miles long without even realising. Yeah, it was hard, (at some points, really REALLY hard), but it didn't occur to me that I couldn't do it due to a lack of sportiness.
I still don't label myself as a 'Sporty Person', and probably never will - I don't look or feel how I imagine a Sporty Person looks and feels, and I've certainly not got the physique. But I am learning a sport. So I think I've got to at least acknowledge that I am not solely a clever person either. Those two things that I held apart for so long don't have to be exclusive. Going for the occasional jog isn't going to take away your IQ. You can be a bit of both.
And I am.
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