It was a clear, crisp December morning. The frosty blue sky was speckled with only the slimmest strips of pink-hued cloud and the winter breeze was raw and bracing. A warming aroma of fresh coffee and sizzling bacon drifted through the still, cold air; Eggenezer Scrooge had just gotten in from an early morning gym session and was ready for a serious feed.
After drizzling a small Canadian forest's worth of maple syrup on her bacon and pancakes, she heartily devoured the lot and sat down with her calendar to plan to her training up until Christmas. Scheduling in all the training she wanted to do around Christmas parties, family commitments and various festive social celebrations was very tricky indeed. Scrooge slunk back into her armchair in despair, "How on earth will I ever manage to keep fit and stay lean with all these opportunities to eat lots of food and get drunk!? I'll have to spend valuable exercise time on doing my hair and dressing up. By the time January comes, I'll be a big sluggish mess and have an extra stone of Christmas food sitting in my belly. Maybe I should leave all the partying and revelry and just keep training hard, bah humbug!"
Scrooge sat and frantically set about scribbling everything out of her diary and replacing it with turbo sets, kettlebell classes, strength training and long, offroad runs. She even threw in a few swim sessions for good measure. After ringing around her friends and thinking up many an imaginative excuse as to why she would be unable to make all these social arrangements, she was exhausted and decided a 30 minute powernap would be the answer.
She awoke with a start as she could hear something: an eerie, creaking noise coming from the back door. Stealthily, she picked up the nearest weapon, a syrup-covered fork, and crept slowly towards the door. Suddenly, the door flew open and Scrooge leapt backwards, covering her face from the fierce, swirling blast of air. When she finally uncovered her eyes she gasped in shock as right there in the doorway, a mangled, rusty carcass of a bicycle frame had appeared. She edged towards the frame for a closer inspection and a wave of nostalgia washed over her as she realised it was the bicycle that had taken her through her teenage years, the bicycle she had whizzed around the woods on without a care in the world, in a time long before she ever knew that cycling would become an obsession.
The metal frame groaned and screeched and to Scrooge’s amazement a bellowing voice sounded from the rickety framework “Scrooge, you’ve got this all wrong. You’re life balance is so off I’m surprised you haven’t fallen over.. in fact, that probably explains why you do keep having accidents!”. Scrooge scrunched her eyes and opened them again, thinking that this apparition could only be but a dream, “You can’t be real, just a figment of my imagination. Perhaps there is such a thing as too much cake, maybe the sugar is playing tricks on my mind.. I should go for a run to clear my head!” The frame replied “More exercise is not the answer to all your problems Scrooge. I’ve come to tell you that on this eve, you will be visited by three spirits who will come to show you the error of your ways, by the time Christmas comes maybe you will have a better perspective”. “Nonsense!” Scrooge scoffed, “Be off with you, I don’t have time for this mumbo jumbo. Clear off so I can go for a run”. With that, the frame vanished and Scrooge was left feeling a little shaken. “I obviously haven’t eaten enough food”, she thought to herself “I must be a bit light-headed”.
After preparing a light packed lunch of fruit, nuts, a couple of protein shakes, a few sticks of celery with peanut butter and raisins, a cereal bar and a triple-layer chicken and bacon sandwich filled with satisfyingly large chunks of meat and stuffed with a stupendous amount of salad, Scrooge set off to engage in an afternoon of good physical activity…
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