The Program

A story by Kyahgirl

 

 

Back in the mid 90’s, my friends Nancy, Dianne, and I, had quite a pack of dogs to exercise and quite a bit more free time than we do now.  We’d get out for a good long walk at the gravel pits 3 or 4 times a week at least.   

 

Now Dianne, is one of those blessed women who is almost six feet tall and oh so slender. 

 

Nancy and I?       Not so much. 

 

Because Nancy and I lived a bit closer together we’d sometimes manage to squeeze a few extra walks in, but that’s good. We needed it.   So did our dogs.  You don’t want to try living with herding dogs who haven’t had enough exercise!

 

We tended to spend a bit more energy discussing and even trying, extra fitness and exercise regimes than we did when Dianne was with us.   At one time we both bought the same Kathy Smith ‘walking workout’ tape to play on our Walk-mans. There was a lot of high steppin’ country music and Kathy’s energetic voice exhorting us to ‘push that tush’. 

 

Well, that got old fast.  Between needing time to holler at the dogs to stop chasing the cows, and yakking our heads off, Kathy became a bit of an annoyance on our walks. 

 

We thought it would be good to explore ‘exercise videos’.

 

I went to A&B Sound that weekend and saw a whole slew, ranging from the Buns of Steel type to the frenetic aerobics tapes.  I decided on another Kathy Smith offering; something with lots of low, easy cardio, strength, flexibility and, most importantly, no complex maneuvers.   Walking is about as complicated as we got at that time.  

 

I brought the tape home and phoned Nancy . We were going to try it together later in the week but I said I’d check it out that evening.

 

It was great! Nancy phoned me later to see what I thought of it. I was enthusiastically telling her about the nutrition talk in the beginning, then the easy music, good warm up, and long aerobic section.  The last 20 minutes included a long cool down and strength and flexibility exercises. 

 

She sounded excited too and asked me if I found it  very‘hard’.

 

This was followed by a stunned silence.

 

After several seconds, I sheepishly told her ‘Well, I didn’t actually DO it’!! I watched it!!

 

This was followed by gales of laughter, and a joke that I’ve been teased about for over 10 years.