Do you know the muffin man?

I had the most delicious breakfast on Saturday. I have to admit that fewer things in life beat a frothy cappuccino in the early morning. It was well worth waking up at dawns crack to meeting Snow and Slacky (physio varsity mates) at Tasha's in Melrose Arch at 8am. After hearing a muffled growl coming from somewhere beneath the table, followed shortly by something which sounded like earth-moving operations (which I soon realised were coming from my echoing stomach), I decided to have a quick squiz at the muffins on display. The muffin man was clearly not on strike that morning because the assortment of muffins that lay warm and inviting in the cake display cabinet were more exciting than popcorn and a coke at the movies (I have been known to go to movies simply for the popcorn and coke). There were blueberry, chocolate, carrot, banana and pecan and bran muffins all glistening invitingly with fancy assortments of decorative toppings. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. The thought of ordering French toast or scrambled eggs after seeing that display would have been like hiring Fight Club to watch Edward Norton and looking away in every shot of Brad Pitt’s abs. I ordered banana and pecan and it was delicious. I am talking Meg-Ryan’s-restaurant-scene- in-When-Harry-Met-Sally-delicious. It took me several minutes to decide which flavour to go for, but that bad boy stood no chance once it was served to me on an icing-sugary platter. There wasn’t a crumb left and the manager even came up to me to ask if I wanted a second one on the house because he had witnessed the punishing of the first. I politely declined. Idiot!

No coincidence

My drive in to work this morning was pure bliss. The traffic had practically built up to my complex driveway; there were windscreen washers threatening me with squeegee’s and bottles of diluted sunlight liquid every direction I looked; and I got stuck behind a bakkie travelling at 30km/hour carrying 30 workers who all stared at me, blinking in unison, their heads nodding back and forth like the little bobble head dolls you see through tinted back windscreens of dodgy 1979 Mazda 626’s. Yes it was pure ecstasy, and I say this without a hint of sarcasm.

“Don't worry a-bout a thing, 'cause ev-ry little thing, gonna be all right.
Singing' don't worry about a thing, 'cause ev-ry little thing gonna be all right!"

Have you ever noticed how the lights of a robot are the same colours as the rasta flag? This is no coincidence. Bob Marley is THE man in traffic. "This is my message to you-hoo-hoo."

Gym fail

The benefits of exercise are blindingly obvious when you are sitting on the couch feeling guilty about eating yet another piece of cherry nougat. All I can think about at that stage is how much healthier I feel after exercise, how much better I eat after exercise and how wonderful it feels to be fit enough to run 8km’s in the mornings without keeling over half-way from exhaustion. I felt this familiar nagging sensation after eating a steak laden with creamy red wine sauce on Friday night, after polishing off an insanely scrumptious chicken lasagna with ‘The Hot Fisherman’ on Saturday evening and after licking my plate clean of any visible traces of chocolate croissant on Sunday morning. After spending a considerable amount of time weighing up the beauty and informational benefits of an extra hour of shut-eye followed by an hour of long-distance stalking of Will Smith through the E True Hollywood Story vs. going to gym, I finally let ‘The Hot Fisherman’ bundle me into my car late Sunday morning.


After spending a small fortune on two bottles of water (I chose an expensive brand of water which is supposed to be equivalent to taking vitamins – great marketing gimmick that) we finally loped through the turnstiles of the gym. Coughing up half a lung and sneezing from the insult of chlorine on our mucous membranes, ‘The Hot Fisherman’ and I ascended the stairs to the weights section. There, we performed a series of death defying exercises such as:

• A gazillion lunges with 6 kilo weights in each hand,

• Squats with weights,

• Quadriceps extensions,

• Hamstring curls,

• Abduction exercises or the ‘Yes/No machine’ as The Hot Fisherman refers to it,

• Leg press AND

• Ab exercises

Finally, after an hour of torture, ‘The Hot Fisherman’ and I limped out of the gym to the car.

The second day after gym is always the worst. The benefits of exercise are no longer relevant when you wake up in the morning with legs so stiff that the only way you can get yourself mobile is to walk with straight knees. I am a walking stick man...or woman. It looks like my legs have been placed in Plaster of Paris. Forrest Gump in braces has got nothing on my limp. Worse still, my bum is so stiff that every time I sit down I have to let loose a little groan of pain like an old lady after a hip transplant. I have to hold onto the railing when ascending stairs as I may pass out from the throbbing in my quads and I am considering buying some ice during my lunch break to attempt to reduce the inflammation in my calves (I had to wear high heels this morning because it was physically impossible for me to put my heels on the floor). This evening, I will most definitely make a date with Will Smith on my couch and that piece of nougat I have been saving will never taste sweeter.

Muddy socks

Official time: 00:32:07.
And no, I am not talking about the ‘Fit at 40: 32 Minute Advanced Workout’ or the 32 Minute Messenger Bag Tutorial from ‘The Diary of a Quilter: the confessions and obsessions of a stay-at-home quilter’. I am, in fact, talking about my time for running the JP Morgan Challenge last night.


Not bad considering:

• I was soaked to the bone from standing in the pouring rain at the start.

• I had to run through someone’s flower bed.

• I had to jump over several garden gnomes and,

• I ‘dodged, dipped, ducked, dived and dodged’ through hordes of people who all started the race in the sub-20 seed although it was pretty obvious that they had never seen a pair of running shoes, let alone run a road race in under 4 minutes a kilometer.

To those people I say this: Either shape up, buy yourself a decent pair of running shoes and actually DO some running or be a little more considerate and stand where you are supposed to – in the 40 to 50 minute seed.

My Purple Nikes are no longer purple, but now have a lovely reddish-brown hue to them thanks to the selfishes (a selfish person who is similar to a shelfish i.e. no backbone or brain) whom I had to leap onto pavements and trudge through mud pools for. P.S. You selfishes owe me a pair of Puma socks since mine are slpattered with enough earth to build an apartment garden. Okay? Lovely.

JP Morgan Corporate Challenge

Yes its tonight. SO much of excitement...


It’s, wait for it…not 5km, not 6km, but 5.6km. Because 5 km is not enough and according to some, 6 is too much.

Last year I ran it in about 36 minutes but I started in a batch that were supposed to run at about 5 min/km. However...there were some remarkably unfit and over nourished individuals in my batch and therefore I spent the entire race dodging the walkers, looping round trees to avoid the shufflers, ducking underneath the flaying arms of the boozers and completely ignoring the talkers.
But not this year…I have a cunning plan.

You see, my company sponsors our race entry and has a tent at the JP Morgan each year. Unfortunately, this is one race when it helps to be catastrophically unfit. What tends to happen is that all the booze in the company tent is consumed by the walkers DURING the race so that those of us who actually RUN the JP Morgan Challenge (why would they call it a challenge if it’s meant to be a gentle stroll) get nothing upon finishing.

Yes…so this year I have a plan. I received a little email communication from my company this morning to say that no alcohol will be served before the race. Mwa ha ha ha! So I shall be running…as fast as my Purple Nikes will take me, in the 4 minute/km batch (yikes) so that I can quench my thirst with a few ice-cold Sav’s (Savannah Dry) and wait patiently for my fellow ‘runners’ to join me. I know that people will have to pass me this year if they genuinely are hoping to finish in fewer than 30 mins, but that’s ok. I will pretend to have a stitch if they give me funny looks.

Love thy neighbour

Living in an apartment block has many advantages. There’s security, a garden service and friendly neighbours in every direction when you need to borrow a cup of sugar. But there are also distinct disadvantages, one of which is the close proximity of your neighbours…in particular, the close proximity of your bathroom window to that of your neighbours. I often picture my neighbor in his bathroom, sitting on the bog…mere meters from me while I brush my teeth. Our bathroom windows are so close that if I leant out of mine, I could probably see into his. This doesn’t bode well for either of us…because humans need privacy in a bathroom, a luxury neither of us have anymore.


I have grown quite accustomed to his routine, however. I know that my neighbor has fairly good oral hygiene. I know he brushes his teeth (probably a little too violently judging by the amount of scrubbing and brushing I can hear in the mornings) and I know he uses mouthwash – which is more than I can say for myself. I know that he takes baths and very occasionally showers (which is quite bizarre for a man) and that he is in there A LOT. I also know my neighbor lives with his wife/girlfriend because they have conversations through the bathroom door which I have the ‘pleasure’ of listening in to.

What is scary to accept is that my neighbours can probably hear everything that my housemates and I do during our own ‘quality bathroom time’. This was confirmed when we were Cc’d in an email from our neighbour to a glass fitter, requesting a special tint on their bathroom window which would make it less transparent. In the email, the question about whether this glazing would make the window more sound proof was also raised with a comment below it that made me chuckle. It stated, “Will the glazing assist in sound proofing our bathroom because this morning I could hear my neighbor sneeze?”

I think most people would agree that stage fright in the bathroom is a very serious problem when you think that someone could be listening in on you. So imagine what it’s like when you KNOW people are listening in on you.

Barbie and me

Last night I attended a class held at one of the local sweating holes with my housemate. I don’t have a membership at the gym we attended, but I managed to get in on the pretence that I was interested in joining. I was dragged along to the gym, thinking we would be doing our own thing and I would get the chance to do some much needed lunges and squats. Unbeknownst to me, on our arrival, I was whisked into the gym by my housemate and told that we urgently needed to ‘reserve our spot’ in the class. “Which class?” I casually asked. The response wasn’t exactly what I was anticipating. We were attending a ‘Running Class’. What is a running class you ask? Why, funny you should inquire, because that’s EXACTLY what I was pondering. Does everyone climb on a treadmill and run in time to music? Does everyone learn preparatory techniques like stretches and core strengthening exercises that will help improve your running? The answer is no…and no.


A running class, my dear friends, is literally a class where you either run on the spot or run in a circle around the class…FOR A FULL HOUR.

Okay, I am exaggerating just a bit. The instructor does try to mix it up by including lunges of death, suicidal squats and killer push-ups in between sets of ‘running’. My point is that these classes can’t be good for you because firstly, we ran in the same direction around the class each time. Don’t even ask what that’s doing to your knees and ankles. Secondly, the whole class is covered in floor to ceiling mirrors and therefore seeing yourself ‘running’ in the mirrors is unavoidable. Thirdly, there is a blonde Barbie ‘running’ next to you and she quite enjoys watching herself ‘run’ while thrashing her ponytail so wildly that every now and then you get a mouthful of hair or a whip across the face.

I will admit that even though I am skeptical about classes like these, I was pretty pooped afterwards. The best part about the class was the instructor. She kept us all amused with her pelvic gyrations to Mango Groove, hysterical screaming and the occasional inappropriate comment about her futile sex life. It’s no wonder her classes are brimming with people of all ages and sizes. I have to admit, if I get dragged to one of her classes again, I will gladly participate…as long as it’s not a ‘running class’ and I don’t have to stand next to Gym Barbie.