Gyms and working out on board the good ship Spirit. - oh what a cruise.
It is hard to believe just how seriously people were taking exercise aboard a cruise ship. What should have been the ideal opportunity to slow down and relax served only as an incentive to work out vigorously on the ship's gym. I should have spent the entire holiday just chilling out and taking it easy without breaking a single bead of sweat. But why not? It was time to go for it.
I'd never considered it as an option before but hey this was the ultimate challenge and I privately felt that an hour spent on the gym bike would be thoroughly beneficial and deeply healthy. Of course it would be exhausting and I may have regretted this rash and perhaps demanding venture into the unknown. But a man's got to do what a man's got to do.
A couple of years ago my family and I had spent our first ever cruise in the mysterious fjords and stunning waterfalls of Norway. Here I discovered my first gym bike. It was my baptism of fire, my introduction to the world of exercise and fitness on board a glamorous cruise ship. At first it seemed the craziest of ideas but here was the chance to fling myself whole - heartedly into full on exertion and working out. But this was no pumping iron holiday for me. There had never been any intention on my part to lift weights, run on running machines or treadmills or strengthen muscles. So I just climbed onto the gym bike and went for it.
Slowly but surely I pedalled gently for roughly a half hour and quickly realised that the joints, veins, tendons and arteries were in notably unresponsive mood. I think it must have come as a major culture shock to these poor old, terribly neglected bones. But I persevered and gradually worked up a head of steam to the point where I began to think of myself as something of a Sir Bradley Wiggins or Sir Chris Hoy type. Sadly no sooner had reality kicked in when I came back down to earth and soon accepted my deficiencies, pedalling furiously but never quite knowing just why I was going so fast.
Still here I was again on a Greek islands cruise ship and looking at buttons that indicated the amount of fat you were burning, your heart rate and a quaint red button with a red heart on it. I draped my towel onto the bike, adjusted my Israeli cap on my head, got comfortable on my seat and just pedalled as if my life depended on it which was never the case anyway. There are quicker tortoises than me and that's a fact. But I'd made my decision to put my foot down and race through the French countryside, past the fragrant vineyards, past the nodding cornfields, along the snoozing country lanes and then back to the Arc de Triomphe. Hold on this is the not the Tour De France. This is the stateliest of cruise ships and I'm a happy gym biker and just having fun on a gym bike.
This was my rather modest attempt at replicating the Olympic spirit of Hoy and Wiggins, legs pumping like pistons and then wiping rivers of sweat from a well heated forehead. It was hard to think of a more exhilarating experience than this. Of course it was hard work and my sanity may well have been questioned but hey who cares. Once I'd worked up a decent momentum I gradually paced myself holding back on the sprint to the finish but instead looking around the gym and wondering whether it was worth my while.
Besides I was here to enjoy myself , setting myself up on one of the many sundecks and abandoning myself to lengthy sessions of sunbathing with cap on head, Neville Cardus book in my hand, the relentlessly delightful sunshine and 95 degrees of heat every day. Carpe Diem as that late, brilliant and deeply missed Robin Williams once said. You had to seize the day. I had to seize the day immediately and without any hesitation whatsoever.
I lay back on my sun lounger and began to think to of Noel Coward's mid-day sun. But the assumption that you have to be mad to go out at that time of the day has to be a fallacy. For most of the afternoon I would sizzle and roast like the proverbial chicken, the burning sun beating down on a chest that hadn't been exposed to any sun for over a year but was now taking advantage. It's at times like this that you find yourself extremely grateful and privileged to be in the same company of summer sunshine, soaking up all the while the powerful rays of the Mediterranean heat.
I sat back for as long as I could and allowed my imagination to transport itself to some even more exotic voyage, to the mystical Far East perhaps, lands of pagodas, sampans and junk boats, the golden sunsets of Greece, Italy and Spain and then the Copacabana beach in Brazil where football once dominated but a team are now sad and chastened. You thought of Israel, sweet and heavenly Israel where nut brown men in their 80s swing on the monkey bars of Tel Aviv beach.
Back in the gym I'd almost reached the end of my hour on the bike and felt no muscle aches or pains, surprisingly fresher and fitter than I'd felt at the beginning of my exercise work out. Admittedly my legs did began to feel like lead weights and bags of cement but this had to be an understandable reaction because I hadn't really been on any kind of bike since I was a small lad in shorts. This was the lime green bike my parents had bought me as a kid with stabilisers but this bike was different, completely different.
I'm not sure why but it didn't feel as though I'd really pushed myself to hard. There were younger men and women who seemed to determined to push themselves to the brink of exhaustion. Behind me on the running machines men and women slowly plodded and trundled their way to their personal world record. They walked and walked and walked on a machine that was seemingly designed for running. but here was simply used as just an excuse for a good, old fashioned stroll on a running machine. The strides lengthened and this was a wonderful demonstration of repetition and more repetition.
Then there was the music. This was the very latest in dance music, trance music or whatever they call music nowadays. I may be in my 50s now but I have to tell you this was quite enjoyable and soothing to the fevered brow. The music blared out for who knows how long but it was an antidote to the pain some of us were feeling. It could have quite been fittingly called background music because it just seemed to surround us, gradually increasing in volume before sinking back into a mellow beat.
So there you are folks another tale from my cruise on board the good ship Spirit courtesy of Thomsons. That gym really did inspire, stimulate and re-vitalise me. On reflection it almost seemed an afterthought after the soporific sunbathing of the early Greek afternoon. It was time to set sail for another Greek treasure island. I looked out of one of the portholes and saw the most gloriously warm corridor of late evening sunshine, a white beam of light shining brightly into my transfixed eyes. A life on the ocean wave. It was perfect and always will be.
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