Personally Training

I used to have a personal trainer. 

Stop laughing, I did. 

I knew it wasn't going to work.  I'm not deluded.  I've never been the type of person who gets a personal trainer and finds herself losing half her body weight and getting addicted to the treadmill.  Or even worse the fecking cross trainer.

No, this was a medical thing.  I'd been "like the handle of a bucket" as my Dad said, with back pain for months.  Literally, doubled over.  And I'm not a particularly graceful specimen standing upright, never mind going around like a troll.

Anyway, after numerous sessions with the physio, this particular personal trainer was recommended to me.
By recommended, obviously I mean I was ordered to go, with threats of never walking straight again if I resisted.

In fairness the trainer was the physio's son, and I knew I was being made a fool of, but I was desperate.

Down a narrow and twisting road I drove, one dark and windy evening. There was grass growing in the middle of the road, with bits of snow still stuck to it.  It was the kind of road you'd expect to drive down to find a fortune teller, or the ruins of your ancestor's homestead, but not a personal trainer.

I persevered, and found myself at the door of a very fancy bungalow.  I wasn't allowed in, as soon as I explained my business there, I was directed to the shed, and was told my trainer would be out to me in a few minutes.
I'd come straight from work, and the smell of proper Mammy made dinners wafting out at me was almost too much to bear.

I got back into the car to wait, and eventually my trainer arrived out to get me.

If I was ten years younger, I definitely would have fancied him.  For all the good it would have done me.  He couldn't have made it more obvious that I repulsed him.
I don't know why he looked so surprised.  I'd told him on the phone to think of Roseanne Barr on twenty Benson and Hedges a day and he'd have some idea what to expect.

He still looked at me as though I'd just walked dog mess into his surprisingly nice, blonde wood lined gym.  It was much bigger than it had appeared on the outside, and for a minute I was delighted.

Just a minute though.  Shane, for that was his name, made it perfectly obvious that in his opinion fat, unfit people just weren't trying hard enough.  He was right, in my case, but that wasn't the point.

He was one of the GAA people.  His father, the physio, worked with the County football team, and Shane trained them.  GAA people aren't like ordinary fit people, in my opinion.  They are aggressively, competitively fit, and he decided that there was no reason that I shouldn't be the same.

He set me to doing three full minutes on some machine the like of which I've never seen before, and told me that I'd be doing four minutes each on about five different machines after that.

I told him that this wasn't going to be possible, that I would simply have a coronary and I was afraid an ambulance wouldn't be able to find the house, but he insisted that I was wrong. 
Then he started on about working through pain barriers, and feeling the burn, so I decided it would probably hurt less to do the bloody exercise than to listen to him, and got started.

It really really hurt.  At least my hearing kind of went fuzzy, so I couldn't hear him shouting orders at me anymore.
My breathing became so ragged that I honestly started worrying about that coronary.  I couldn't see because of the salty and scaldy sweat dripping into my eyes, from my eyebrows.  Sorry if that's too much information, I'm just trying to create an accurate picture here.

He had absolutely no sympathy for me.  When I almost fell off the machine, and begged for thirty seconds to recoup, he refused, saying that it would make things even worse.

After half an hour, all I could think about was surviving to the end of the hour.  But I needn't have worried.

He announced that that was probably enough for today, he didn't want to kill me.  Then he saw me out, it turns out there wasn't even shower facilities, for all his blonde wood and fanciness.

I'd paid for the full hour.  But I was so relieved to get out I honestly didn't give a shite.  I'd say I was home an hour before I started breathing normally.

The next time I went, it was the same caper.  I'd run the legs off myself for thirty minutes, pay for an hour, then he'd throw me out and go off and watch Top Gear or something.

I only went about three times.  He rang me in the end, to ask when I was going back, and I didn't even bother to lie.  I just told him I'd rather eat my own head than keep up with his regime.  I was full of brazenness and wouldn't listen to a word he said.  I actually laughed when he told me that if I kept up with him for six months I'd be like a different person.

I haven't lost an ounce since.  In fact, I've put more weight on.  So who's laughing now?