Is jogging even romantic at all?

Those of us who were born before the advent of smartphones must be familiar with the music of Celine Dion. Her music made one fall in love even if they didn’t have a partner. In one of her popular songs, she romantically declares that ‘love doesn’t ask why’. The calm bliss of that song is ringing in my ears as I write this.

And I get it, the average African man is not supposed to be romantic. At least, he should not show it openly.

Open shows of romance are a sign of weakness. Our forefathers set the pace by showing romance in unique ways like marrying many wives, eating from each of their wives’ houses alternatively and so on.

But that’s beside the point. Let’s talk about jogging; does it have physical as well as romantic benefits?

My online fitness coach by the name Sum_messy accurately states that a man who works out has the self-confidence that would attract any woman. It was on the strength of this that, last weekend, I decided to go out for a romantic jog with Hilda.

You all remember her right? The lady I have been unsuccessfully trying to fall in love with? You see, with the long ‘stay at home’ reality, most of us have been forced to find something different to do. So after exhausting all the movies within my reach, I reached out to Hilda to see if we could copy the romantic European life.

And copying has consequences because the European jogging experience is entirely different from ours. You see, they jog around properly manicured gardens, sometimes alongside their properly fed dogs. They do so with expensive sports gear, designer sports shoes and sleek earphones, probably listening to the latest music.

Hell, they even park the latest cars just by the lawns where they do the jogging then retire to their cars for refreshments and what have you. I don’t know why I imagined that my own experience would be the same. Oh my! It was so different.

First, I don’t own proper sports gear so I had to make do with average shorts and old rubber shoes. Then, we couldn’t find any properly manicured lawn so we chose a common track that we had to share with motorbike riders early in their hustle. And because jogging is not a common trend in this country, we had to make do with stares from early morning risers, some of who probably confused us for night runners.

Anyway, we ran on as we welcomed the dawn. My shoes made it tough as they kept shifting beneath my heels, confusing the tempo of the jogging. Once in a while, I had to pause my own jogging to wait for Hilda to catch up. Not that I was doing particularly well myself. In fact, by the time we had done about a kilometre, I was panting like a pig, sweating profusely and heaving like a steam engine.

I couldn’t possibly escort Hilda to her place in that extremely sweaty state and so we bade each other goodbye and promised to be starting the day in similar fashion.

Neither of us has kept that promise.

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