Lots of us, certainly women my age, so I understand, aren’t getting enough exercise these days.

Me, I started running when I was still in primary school and was blessed with a vast nature area behind our house.

If you’re in the middle of the urban environment, such as in Amsterdam, running outdoors often isn’t much fun. These days, I prefer grass and other natural surfaces to run on anyway. That’s gentler on tendons and joints and on your feet too.

So I increasingly often went on long walks.

In 2017, I had a one-sided viral pneumonia, however, and it took me a long time to bounce back from that in terms of energy level. Next, we had the pandemic with almost two years of pretty strict lockdowns.

The stretch that I used to walk is no longer available. I’d have to walk through traffic for about an hour, a lot of that traffic pretty heavy, causing the kind of non-stop noise that can leave you with a tension headache, to reach a nature reserve where I could walk around for a while, but then I’d have to walk back through traffic again for about an hour.

There is a lovely nearby cemetery where I can walk around and around and where I’ve also run in the past. But that’s not enough and becomes dull pretty quickly.

I found a distant but lovely stretch of grass that I can walk to and where I can then can walk around and around, but (the grass is often wet these days and) it’s more suitable for warmer weather, when you can saunter home and not feel that you “have” to walk to it and “have” to walk back from it.

So here’s an alternative, if you like music. It’s a playlist I started putting together during the pandemic lockdowns. More fun than an elliptical trainer and unlike exercise equipment, it takes up no precious space in your home, just speakers and you dancing it out, shaking it off.

Shake it off!

You can do this at any time (headphones on if needed) and for as long or briefly as you like.

It’ll really cheer you up!

PS
Logitech Z120 speakers are pretty decent.