Fit for France
Movement and fitness in our new home
I took running gear with me when we were in France for a month last spring. I’m normally very good about keeping up habits, but I didn’t run a single time while we were there!
I have always needed to move a lot. It’s a combination of vanity (we all want to look good naked, right?) and a restless mind. Structured movement gives my brain something immediate to chew on. When I get into the rhythm of a long run, bike ride, or swim I’m only thinking actively about my pace, the cadence of my pedaling, my freestyle stroke, my breathing. Movement makes me feel present in my own body and nearly everything about the outside world fades away; I maintain just enough outside awareness to avoid being run over. As a kid, movement was about burning up youthful energy - my first experience with truly grueling workouts was as part of my high school wrestling team. In college and later as a professional adult, strenuous exercise became a salve for the demands of architecture school, the frenzied pace of life and work in New York City, the trauma of a divorce.
Yoga in the park was a big part of my fitness routine during our spring visit to Montpellier. I was working with a new coach on-line, @mazen.movement and really enjoyed daily practice under the aqueduct in the Promenade du Peyrou. Mazen has me working mostly on inversions, headstands, handstands, forearm stands (pincha mayurasana) - these are challenging in a new way (balance and upper body strength!) and they can be done anywhere you have a wall or tree to brace yourself and soft ground to lay on. There was plenty of other exercise, miles upon miles of daily walking (a delight in the old city), and a bit of bike riding, though I didn’t find time on the last trip to do a proper long (30-60 mile) ride.
This visit we’ll be in France for at least three months, and I need to be more serious about structuring my fitness routine instead of trusting that walking and handstands are going to counteract the bread, cheese, and all those fucking sauces (this is the vanity part of me talking.)
My current fitness routine in Austin includes a long walk with the dog in the morning (between 1 to 3 miles), swimming 2,000 meters 4x a week, some biking on weekends, and daily yoga/calisthenics practice. Carolyn and I joined the Dell Jewish Community Center, “The J”, here in Austin recently. They have a fantastic outdoor pool and I’ve been enjoying getting in the water during the dark early morning a few days a week.
Yoga and cycling are easy for me to maintain. They are fun, I own all the equipment, and to start all one has to do is step out the door (I’m a low activation-energy exerciser). I want to keep swimming when we return to France. I find it keeps me in shape as effectively as running, but I have fewer aches and injuries. I’ve been researching pools around Montpellier and we have good options! The two pools closest to our apartment are the Piscine Olympique Angelotti (POA) and the Piscine Pitot which is a smaller facility with 25 meter lanes, which will be more familiar to me than the enormous 50m lanes at the POA. Fifty meter laps seem dauntingly long compared to the 25 yard lanes I am used to.
The Montpellier Méditeranée Métropol Réseau des Piscines (3MRP) manages 14 swimming facilities in the metro area. It describes the POA as:
A superb competition pool combined with a magnificent recreational pool. The fun pool is a real aquatic leisure center with whirlpool baths, rapid river, giant slide, solarium on the terrace, etc.
The 3MRP site sells e-tickets to the city pools. The normal rate is €5.30 and certain groups (students, elderly, etc) get a 40% discount. There’s a pass to allow unlimited pool use during a 3 month period, but I couldn’t find that option on the 3MRP website. Someone on our Americans in Montpellier Facebook page informed me that one has to buy those passes in person (I’ll start working on the vocabulary for that conversation today.) My first reaction was that €5.30 sounds expensive but if I swim 4x a week that’s €85 per month, which is less than membership at The J for one adult.
The Piscine Pitot is right next to the park where I do my yoga workouts. The pool’s website says it is closed for summer (which sounds crazy to a person who is barely surviving the Texas summer of 2023) but the pool should be open in early September, a few days after we get back to France!
There’s currently a notice on the POA (Olympic Pool) website that the whirlpool baths have been shut down until further notice and hair dryers have been deactivated until the end of summer, both of those measures are for compliance with an energy audit. I like that they’re willing to do without minor luxuries for the common good; esprit de corps is a real thing in France and it’s one of the things I find lacking in American society lately. But before I get all high and mighty about the superiority of French culture, I have to find that book Carolyn reminded me of where they talk about how the typical orderly French behavior evaporates into mayhem at public pools. I hope that’s not true!
We have been visiting a local community piscine here in the Gers. It is busy with every age group represented and a great place to people watch or, as I call it, tattoo watch. It is difficult to do serious laps with all the activity, but everyone is always kind and polite.