In which I decide to get fit. And then decide not to.

I’ve just been for a run.  My first since I became pregnant with the fully-grown-toddler Baby.  On the plus side, I didn’t wet myself, and none of my insides fell out of my vagina.  Nonetheless, running – particularly after  almost three years of not running – in the tropics is not something I’d really recommend.  If you are curious, however, and have the good sense and fortune not to live in a country with 100% humidity and melt-you-skin-heat every single day of the year, this is what to do.

• Find yourself a steamroom.  One with no windows and a hatch is ideal.  
• Drag a running machine inside it, and turn it on.
• Set the temperature to Volcano, and the humidity to Ocean.
• Put on the teeniest workout clothes you can find.  (Now is not the time for either modesty or self consciousness.)
• Dip yourself in a bath of sweat-resistant insect repellent. (Or you could wonder what all the fuss is about and half-heartedly spray in the general direction of your body)
• Have on hand the following:  an assistant; some snakes; several bin-liners full of angry mosquitoes.
• Sprint into the steamroom, leap onto the running machine, and tell yourself that this isn’t so bad after all.
• Run for about 12 seconds before realising you haven’t brought a drink.
• Call out for one of the bags of mosquitoes to be opened and shaken through the hatch.  The hatch should be shut firmly afterwards.
• Close your eyes and your mouth and keep running.
• Wish you’d decided to go for the bath option after all.
• Call out for a snake, and hope that it slithers away from you.
• Develop the worst cramp you have  EVER had, and think about sitting down. 
• Remember the snake and the mosquitoes and keep moving.
• Start to feel the first symptoms of dehydration.
• Call for more mosquitoes.
• Shout “Lights out!”, run in the sudden and pitch dark, and tell yourself you’ve just experienced tropical sunset.
• Randomly hit the incline button on the treadmill, thereby discovering hills in your neighbourhood you never knew existed.
• Start to hallucinate.
• Feel your knee twinge.
• Call for more mosquitoes.
• Decide, bugger it, you’re stopping.  Snakes and mosquitoes be damned.
• Hobble out of the steamroom.
• Check your watch.  You’ve been running for 11 minutes.
• Lie facedown on a bed in an air-conditioned room without moving for so long that the Baby – the one who got you into this unfit mess in the first place – starts to cry with anxiety.
• Sweat for about 2 hours. Even after you shower. Go to embrace your children, only to have them shriek and scurry away from you, their little faces filled with disgust. 
• Wait another 3 years before trying anything this foolish again.