Persistence – Part one.

When I was thirty-three, I rang my wife one day from inside a Fitness Warehouse in Brisbane and told her i wanted to buy a rowing machine. She said she though it was a good idea until i told her the price. $1600 Australian back in 2007 was a lot of money.

“Don’t they have rowing machines for few hundred dollars?” she asked.

“Yeah. I’ve tried them. they’re all shit. This one’s good. Nice feel. Nice and smooth, good resistance What do you think?”

“I don’t know. If you think you’ll use it…”

She had the right to be sceptical. I’d hardly been one to get into exercise at any time in my life. Now, all of a sudden, I want to spend a fortune on a rower. Not only that, we’d just bought a tiny workers cottage in Kedron, (without doubt one of the worst dwellings in Brisbane, and in desperate need of a quick bulldoze, though we couldn’t afford it) so we barely had room for for couch, let alone a rower with an enormous footprint.

“It folds up,” I added, trying to sweeten the deal. “And It’ll give me the motivation to quit the smokes. that’ll save us sixteen dollars a day. I’ll pay it off in no time.”

“Okay, baby. Whatever you think.”

I bought the rower, checked it it the back of my van and spent two hours bolting the ridiculous amount of parts together. I sat back and smiled. the rower took up the entire front room (it used to be a porch that the the previous owners had kindly boarded up with with HardieFlex panels). Strapping the chest strap on, I set the rower to heart rate control, 60% of Max and started rowing, checking out the technique in the user manual.

Five minutes later, i was panting. my legs hurt and i was slipping around on the seat in a pool of sweat.

“Fuck. I need a beer,” I gasped, heading out to the back patio and the comfort of the couch and bar fridge.