Pound slam pound slam pound slam pound slam… The rhythm is heavy but regular, incessant and never-ending. I am not at an all-nighter nor am I listening to Underworld’s Dubnobasswithmyheadman in the corner of my living room, turned up to 10 whilst the house is shorn of all family members for the time being. I wish I was though. Even an all-nighter these days would be better than the reality, the living hell that I’ve chosen to inflict upon myself. I am on a treadmill in a gym, surrounded by mirrors and all manner of shapely and shapeless hotties and fatties, my own contorted, mouth-breathing face staring back at me in disbelief at what I’m putting myself through. “You bastard!” I say to myself between half-gulped gasps. “You’ve conned me!”
Joe Strummer, London Marathon, 1983
I woke up a few weeks ago with the creeping realisation that I turn 50 in the middle of November. My clothes don’t fit as loosely as they should. That favourite suit jacket that I kept for special ‘going-out’ nights no longer buttons up. The pair of indigo Levi’s I used to wear with it are suddenly, somehow, a size too small. I’ve more chins than a Chinese phone book. I am almost 50 and I’m a flabby, Jabbaesque mess. As I’m singing The Strangler’s Something Better Change into my head, get this! – a Facebook ad pops up in my feed. It offers cheap membership with no joining fee to my local community gym and so, a couple of nights later, I find myself in a new pair of trainers being given an induction in a roomful of equipment I had no intention of ever becoming familiar with.
The first days were laughable. I managed a whole 7 minutes on the treadmill; a heaving, wheezing sack of useless mess, huffing and puffing my way through my mantra of “just one more song before I stop.” The radio in the gym is permanently tuned to Smooth FM, with Sade’s Your Love Is King and Spandau Ballet’s True taking turns to push me through the miles metres and I hate it. In a bid to reach my first real milestone of week three – 10 long minutes – I sang bloody Bohemian Rhapsody to myself from the 3rd minute mark, convincing myself that if I didn’t look at the stopwatch that was counting up the long seconds that would become unattainable minutes, by the time I’d rocked out the solo in my head and come crashing back down on the “mama, oo-oo-ee-oo” section, I’d be almost home and dry. It only went and worked too. I’d try this again, definitely, but with far better source material.
I know! The iPod!
I’ve tried using headphones, but from around 12 minutes, the sweat really comes on, so the wee tricky buds won’t stay lodged in my ears. The right one especially slips out at the first hint of a trickly brow. They stay in place a bit better when I’m on the rowing machine – a whole other version of repetitive hell where you provide light entertainment for the heavy weights doing the serious bench pressing and weight lifting behind you – and my tunes have helped me row as far as 5000 metres in the one arm-numbing sitting.
Johnny Marr, NYC Marathon, 2010
It’s the treadmill that I favour though, and I really need my tunes. I’ve realised I’m a luddite. Everyone around me is streaming their music through the musty ether from smart phone to ear pod with not a wire in sight. My old iPod Classic looks out of place, but then, so do I, so fuck it. I’ve discovered that if I happen to be the only one in the gym, I can sneakily switch channels on the TV that pumps out the blandfest that is Smooth FM, so this is what I do whenever I can.
It’s a magic sight when you see the teams of hardened gym folk, all daft hair and stupid, tight, jogging trousers and oriental tattoos and suspiciously golden skin coming in for a serious workout to the wonky pop of Pip Blom and Ty Segall blaring wildly on Marc Riley’s BBC6 Music show. Nobody knows quite how the channel changed, nobody bar the new guy in the new trainers seems to like this stuff and nobody is brazen enough to suggest changing it back again, so everyone works up their sweaty sweat to a beatless racket while I ignore the stopwatch on the treadmill and try to work out who is on Marc’s t-shirt for the night.
Ty Segall – Drug Mugger
And d’you know what? This approach has seen me clock up 30 minutes – half an actual hour – on the treadmill of death. Two and a half sloth-like miles, where every pffft step eugh is hrrrr an accchht almighty heugh effort.
I think I can do this…
Plain Or Pan 