"Stretch, stretch, don't forget to do your stretches," these words suddenly enter my head as I'm ready to leave the gym. It's a mantra my gym trainer once said, well I say gym trainer and mantra loosely, as I haven't saw hide nor hair of him since my first visit, over a year ago.
I think, "Sod the stretches, I have work in an hour." I glance over at four older ladies patiently performing their post aqua-aerobics stretches. They look in remarkably good shape for what, I'm guessing, must be a combined age of two hundred and fifty-one. That's how boring things get sometimes at gym; resorting to calculating the ages of an innocent group of old ladies.
My mind wanders again, this time back to all the exercise I have done without bothering with one single stretch; cross country running, tennis tournaments, cycling, knocky-nine-doors and more recently the gym.
My body tells me a good stretch is now in order to maintain optimum flexibility -- I must have read that somewhere.
I wander nonchalantly over to the mats where the old dears are and proceed clumsily; extending my left leg backwards and clutching my ankle, yanking it backwards and forwards whilst trying to balance on one foot.

"Eeeh Pet, you'll give yourself an injury doing it that way," one old dear says. I glance around and she is already moving over to where I wobble on one leg.
"Bloody hell," I think to myself "this is all I need." Instead, I half smile, drop my leg and turn towards her. It's not that I hate old ladies or anything but they can not half talk and I'm just never in the mood for it.
"If it's the lower leg muscles you're working on..." she begins
"Erm I'm not sure what muscles I should be working on." I interrupt, a little relieved that she has cut to the chase.
"Well, what kind of exercise have you been doing today?" she looks over at her friends and I'm sure she must have rolled her eyes as they gave sympathetic smiles in my direction.
"Three kilometres on the treadmill, only at a jogging pace mind you." I say proudly. She looks at me strangely and I come to the realisation that she must have been an Olympian when younger, and that three kilometres to her would have been comparable to an evening stroll. Or perhaps, she swam the English Channel, breaking the speed record at the age of eighteen.
Her voice interrupts my thoughts on her.
"Well, what you need to do then pet, is work on your hamstrings, your iliotibial band and your groin..." I stop her, perplexed,
"Right, I don't know what an iliotibal band is but I'll take your word for it that I have one." She smiles sweetly and proceeds to demonstrate the various stretches with the skill and manouverability of Bruce Lee in the film Enter The Dragon.
I have definitely now formed the opinion that she must have some sports-related background. Actually, I look around the place and come to the conclusion that more older people work out than younger. I ponder this fact and decide that I may do some kind of survey on it, for no other purpose than to satisfy my curiosity.

I'm well impressed with her knowledge and patience, she seems reasonably sane, so I quickly decide to take her teachings as the "law" on stretching and will seek no further advice from my supposed trainer.
She pats me on the shoulder and gives a smile, the smile only someone of the older generation can give; warm and heartfelt, like I was her granddaughter or something. Then she returns to her friends, who by now all have adopted yoga-type positioning. It all looks rather graceful and serene and I stand staring at the sight a moment longer.
I'm always guilty of staring at people and recently have made a concious effort to curtail my staring to under three seconds.
It's harder than it sounds.

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