I recently went for a run through Montmartre with good friend Q, and once up the hill I realized that I’ve been suffering from reverse hypochondria for the last few years: that I keep thinking I’m much healthier than I actually am. While Q dashed past various tourist packs like a doe on steroids, I trailed behind, blue-purple. Only at the top of the Sacré-Coeur did I catch up with him again, and that only because he himself had stopped jogging.
“Are you okay?” he asked worriedly and I waved my hands that I was fine, but at the same time I was so overheated that I could have emptied the entire baptismal font in one gulp.
The following days I was bent over with muscle pain. Admittedly, I hadn’t run in ages, the last year I had mainly done my cardio on the rowing machine, but that too had come to an end when I made the crossing to Paris a month ago. Since my arrival I had mainly been lying on the couch, reading and writing furiously, but apparently that doesn’t do much for building up lung capacity or muscle mass. At the same time, I was also angry that I suddenly paid so much for neglecting my condition. David Bowie once said that getting older is a great process because it makes you the person you were always meant to be, but I wasn’t sure he meant such a wreck as this. I used to be able to resume running without any problems after half a year of doing nothing, nowadays I was suddenly lame after a month’s break.
‘You have to persevere now,’ said Q. when he came to take a look and saw that I was still recovering. “Otherwise this is an omen.” “Omen?” “Of how bad it will be if you stop exercising completely. Tomorrow morning we go again”, he said firmly.
“But I was hoping to get rid of my sore muscles in the morning,” I lamented.
“You have to risk short-term muscle soreness to avoid long-term misery.”
“But soon I will have a cardiac arrest while walking.”
“There is a greater chance that you will get a cardiac arrest by not walking anymore.”
Then I just gave in. The next morning we set out. Funny, I thought, while the sweat started to spread over my temples again after a few minutes, I used to exercise mainly for my mood, against depression and for the endorphins, to want to live. Now I exercised to live.
Maybe that was old age.
At least it was life.
Ellen Deckwitz writes an exchange column with Marcel van Roosmalen here.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of May 16, 2023.