Goodbye Winter, Hello Spring!

Collaborative post

I’m sure Winter gets longer every year – short days, long evenings, cold, dreary weather – and once Christmas has ended there’s really not much to look forward to!

But now Spring is within touching distance, the days are slowly getting longer and brighter, flowers are starting to appear in the garden and the temperatures are (very) slowly starting to rise. Things are finally looking up…

This year I’m planning on using the inspiration of the Spring season to get into shape. Maybe not great shape, but certainly better shape than I’m currently in after the over-eating, under-exercising festival of Winter! But where to begin?

Certainly not at the gym! It may surprise you to learn that I’m not exactly a gym regular – despite having been a member of two gyms and having spent literally hundreds of pounds over the years I can count the number of times I’ve physically been in one on the fingers of one hand!

Playing football is a great option for getting in better shape, but given I’ve been doing that pretty much every week since I was 11 I can’t really class that as being something new for Spring.

How about running? In one word, ‘no’. In two words, ‘hell no’. I despise running. In fact the only times where I feel it is acceptable to run would be to get to somewhere quickly (e.g. a departing bus) or to escape from something (e.g. a rampaging gorilla).

So what other options are there? Swimming perhaps? Absolutely not, unfortunately, as I’ve never been much of a swimmer. Between sips of cocktail at a hotel pool to get to the swim-up bar perhaps, but swimming laps or lengths has never been for me, not least because I’ve always been pretty bad at it.

One thing that I have enjoyed over the years, that doesn’t require too many friends or expensive equipment, (or too much skill!) are racquet sports. I’ve dabbled in all three of the main types of racquet sport – tennis, badminton and squash – and I’m really going to try to get back into some or all of them over the coming months.

I’ve already got my badminton gear and footwear sorted, so the next step is to look at tennis racquets and squash equipment! I’ve also got a few friends who still play from time to time, so maybe, just maybe, this will be the year, and the season, I get back into the ‘swing’ of things.

Wish me luck!