Thursday, April 25, 2013
If I manage to finish tonight’s post, from the first capitalized letter to the last period, it will be a triumph of the human spirit or, more accurately, the human body. That’s because I’m fresh off two hours of tennis, exponentially more than yesterday’s 35 minutes, and an effectively infinite percentile increase over the 0 minutes of exercise that have marked these past few years. It’s the kind of trajectory that doctors absolutely won’t prescribe, but that is the shape of things for me: ramp up respectably, then fizzle out spectacularly.
I certainly hope this won’t be the case, of course, because the ramp-up has been brutal. There was a moment yesterday, not more than 10 minutes into the session, when I thought I was going to die, and then was dismayed by the prospect of perishing while playing terrible tennis. Getting back into regular exercise always sucks, but this felt different. Taking the first step, reaching for the first rung, just felt miles away. Welcome to your 30s, I guess. You’ve heard of The Walking Dead, right? Well, it’s a show about zombies, to whom I felt a special kinship as I shuffled around the court. I’m vainer than a zombie, though. They guide their decaying bodies to food, while I’m attempting to make my decaying body decay less.
The current state of my tennis prowess is grim. No groundstrokes, a spotty backhand, an unreliable forehand, and the occasional good serve. Ugly. The hope is to burn through these deficiencies with pure tonnage. In prior stretches of tennis, I’ve always tried to find one consistent tennis buddy. But you have to be considerate about other people’s schedules, and this or that day won’t work, and then the regimen falls apart. That’s why I’m building a network of players this time. People will invariably hem and haw about not having played tennis in so-and-so years, at which point I drop the pitch: I don’t care about your service history. I’m just looking to cram as many bodies as I can into the week, so I can play tennis whenever I want. This isn’t a support group! I want to place bodies on the clay. It’s blunt, to be sure, but it’s been greeted by chuckles, mainly, and I’m three for three so far. And here we are. Post is in the bag. Now, if I could just will my legs to propel me out of this chair.