While you were snoozing your life away, early morning gym-goers were earning the right to feel like a legend all day. Photo: Onelife Gym.
I have become a superior being.
I understand it’s difficult to notice that immediately through the medium of the written word, but I assure you it’s true.
For three mornings in a row now I have arisen at the truly ungodly hour of 5:30 am to partake of the miraculous fountain of youth that is also called “exercise”.
I lay out my clothes neatly the night before (please note the definition of neatly is currently under dispute in our household); I awake and make myself an oh-so-virtuous cup of peppermint tea to drink on the drive in (I whack a big spoonful of honey in there but if a girl can’t have caffeine she’s got to have something, right?).
When I arrive at the gym I offer cheery and enthusiastic greetings to my early-morning comrades, mostly along the lines of “I can’t understand what you’re saying this early” and “don’t talk to me”.
By the third morning they had accepted me as one of their own with welcoming cries of “so you’re going to stick with it” and “how long do you think this will last?”.
Dear reader, this will last as long as I continue to ride the smug high of being an early-morning exercise person.
I want to be clear, I do not start work any earlier, or with a greater degree of energy and organisation.
There have been no tangible benefits of this practice that bleed into other parts of my life. I don’t eat better, and all my delightful personal flaws remain on full display.
If I’m being honest, evenings are mostly a blur to me now. By mid-morning I’m looking for a sweet treat to keep me going (nothing new if I’m being honest) and by mid-afternoon there is a definite slump (also not new).
But between the hours of 6:30 am and 10 am I feel incredible.
The combination of the post-exercise endorphin high, knowing the only thing I need to do after work is slip into my pyjamas, and the calm sense that I am now simply a better kind of person is hard to beat.
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My husband is my greatest nay-sayer.
“You’ve done this before,” he warns.
I look at him, pityingly. This kind of negativity is typical of a sad, afternoon-exerciser.
“Every time you do this you get all excited, you end up training twice a day, and then you burn yourself out and sit on the sofa for a month.”
Clearly the man is delusional if he can’t see that this time is different.
This time, I’m super-charged with the power of smugness and an implacable sense that through this one simple trick I have finally, somehow, brought my entire life under control.
This time, I am embracing who I was truly meant to be all along: a completely insufferable morning person.
You’re all welcome.
