COMPETITION ON THE HORIZON

This week I need to look at how I want to develop the exercise class, given that there will be only 3 months left after Christmas.There is a core group of enthusiastic participants, especially  Ron who wants me to stand up each week to remind the companians what they are missing. This week one of the fliers left on the tables, announced that from January 12th, there would be  gentle exercise classes for the over sixties every weekday,in the local gym, at a cost of only 4 euros. Additionally a new pilates class would start the next day in the hotel bar.While it is good that there is such variety of exercise on offer, there is a real struggle in the business sector to survive, with alternative, and beauty therapies , massage, facials, homeopathy, hypnosis, nutrition, vying with each other for a corner of the market.

The hotel also announced that I could no longer use the gym downstairs, as this room was being let at a cost of 100 euros a day pro rata, so we were back in the bar, which is a large space, if rather public.There is interest in linking my class with a weight management session, which would run at the same time, and January would seem an ideal time to start.

Ron , who is a long time resident in the area, former chairman of the international club, and the backbone of the whist and tenpin bowling groups is a good man to know. His determination ensured that I had a lift to the tenpin bowling on Tuesday evening, where a group of 16 enthusiasts enjoy a social night out in Benidorm. It felt a bit like my first night at flamenco classes, I was lucky if my bowl hit anything. However Muriel aged 87 who drove herself into Benidorm each week, was on cracking form, and much admired by the rest of the group who were mainly 20 years younger, so perhaps I need to revise my wimpish approach to going out at night. She is certainly a splendid role model, having lived in several countries, and outlived two husbands (neither of which makes her a role model but have probably sharpened her self sufficiency.) Compared with the international club, the companians is a fledgling group, albeit a very successful one, and there is ,I sense, an element of sparring and lip curling, which goes on between key players in both organisations. As the advertising of activities in the weekly news sheet, is strictly controlled by the companians, I need to maintain a neutral position in relation to the merits of the diverse forms of physical activity on offer. With 650 members they could fill endless classes. The real challenge is the ambivalent approach to exercise. epitomised in the gym membership phenomenon, where after 3 months most people’s resolve peters out.The second challenge is the availabilty of cheap alcohol and meals. Having a meal out at lunch time or in the evening is the main form of socialising, and deadly on the waistline.I have to draw a halt to most eating out between guests , and certainly to drinking , to stop the pounds creeping back. What a life!!!

The photos below  I took on the 18th October, little dreaming I would move up to the old town within weeks