Wordsley, Stourbridge, England: 6 degrees, cold, grey and very damp.
As I wrote yesterday, this week is dedicated to planning, setting goals, and outlining priorities and routines for the year, or at least for the next six months, until the end of the year.
It is 6° during the day, but it was 1° when I got up at 7:00 this morning. I had the brilliant idea to go out the back of my mother’s house to do some exercise in the cold, in the back garden on her patio, in front of the back living room. I put on my trainers, grabbed my skipping rope that I had bought in Rio, and began to skip. It was bitterly cold, but my skipping technique was terrible; I hadn’t skipped since I was in Rio.
Arriving in England at the end of November last year, the cold and the damp have deterred me from skipping during this time. I have been doing exercises in my mother’s living room, and I have been walking, especially along the canal, to try to clock up a minimum of 10,000 steps daily. However, I haven’t been skipping.
As I have just said, I was rusty, so my technique was terrible, and I was stopping all the time, but at least I continued. I stayed outside for almost half an hour, skipping and doing other exercises that, if I were in Brazil, I would be doing at the end of Leme or in the park in Flamengo.
In a very short time, the cold no longer affected me, even though my fingers and toes were tingling from it. As the main part of my body, my trunk, was warm from the exercise, I was fine. What surprised me more was the sudden feeling of happiness that came over me, like a wave, and this sense of well-being continued for the rest of the day.
I was, and I am still amazed at how this deep feeling of well-being and happiness, this euphoric feeling that has covered me like a blanket from head to toe, has stayed with me throughout the whole day until I went to bed. It reminded me of Rachel, an ex-girlfriend of mine from when we were teenagers, who now, every Sunday, goes with a group to swim in icy cold water in rivers and lakes in England all year round, including the middle of winter.
When we met to catch up over coffee a couple of weeks ago, as she posts photos on Facebook and Instagram about the groups and their accomplishments, I asked her why she did it. Her answer was clear; it was about mental health and the sense of well-being she and her friends got from it.
This is precisely what I had experienced this morning, although probably not to the same extent as they do in the bitterly cold water in winter. Still, similarly, I also now understand how addictive it is because tomorrow I will be doing it again, and for sure more intensely than this morning.
After my amazing workout outside in the cold, I gave some classes and then went to the neighbouring village to pay some bills for my mother. I had to take money from one of her accounts in one place and then deposit it in the other building Society next door. I also had to buy some groceries as my mother was at the hospital doing physiotherapy.
When I was leaving home to pay the bills, the ambulance arrived to pick her up. The paramedics are very, very patient, kind and attentive with her, helping her get up the garden steps and in and out of the ambulance when she went and returned.
In the evening, I gave classes and began planning for the rest of the year, as I wrote yesterday. For the silly months of December and January are behind us; now, hopefully, the new year should get into swing from here on.
Outdoor exercise, which is not new to me in Brazil, has become part of my routine during my stay in England and will undoubtedly continue to bea part of my routine while I’m here, along with my goals/objectives for the rest of the year.
In bed by midnight.
Thank you.
Thanks for reading this blog post. Please explore my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments section.
Richard
