Have Giddy-Up Bra... Ready to Run!

‘Ask me, ask me anything’ she murmurs, we are close now, really close, and I’m conscious of her firm breasts and oh-so-supportive lycra-ensconced body… I look anxiously around to be sure there is no-one listening. My husband is only metres away on the other side of the flimsy curtain. I hesitate, and then blurt out in whispering tones ‘I… I … I don’t know where they should be!?’ She smiles and scrutinises my mature breasts and nods knowingly…. I know nothing….

She swishes past the curtain and returns with what looks like the inside of a tyre but with sparkly bits… ‘This will stop any movement… things will stay right where they should’. I smile nervously and begin to undress… I pause, waiting for her to leave but she is waiting with the sparkly tyre bra thingy in hand. And there’s not just one, she is holding an assortment of constraints… pink, blue and pretty, others look more…challenging.  

In an attempt to alleviate my slight nervousness I focus on the fact that she is a highly-trained- fitness-and-exercise-garment-consultant, and that she has no interest whatsoever in my fifty year old attachments, other than their geographical positioning.

… There is no way to describe the inelegance, the exorbitant amount of energy and the skill level required to put on a sports bra…. All I can suggest is that you picture a dog that has a sudden and compelling itch and must contort his body or squirm on the lawn to find relief….a similar amount of grunting and leg kicking is necessary to get into a sports bra.

The first bra was too small, obviously, and squeezed my cleavage until it resembled a scrunched up brown paper bag. The life-threatening tightness of the said bondage gave me a head-ache and slightly bulging eyes. The competent sales assistant misinterpreted the tears in my eyes for disappointment.

‘Slip out of that one and we’ll try the next’ she smiled. SLIP!?!?!? 

If I thought putting it on had a high degree of difficulty it was nothing compared to taking it off. I pulled and heaved and started to break out in a sweat…. I must have cried out at one stage as a smaller version of the highly-trained-fitness-and-exercise-consultant popped her Barbie-like head around the curtain and asked if everything was okay. ‘It’s fine!” I hissed… as I grappled with the pain of what could only be a shoulder dislocation. “Here, I’ll help” she offered sweetly and positioned herself behind me. I caught a glimpse of us in the mirror; she had taken the stance that is used to deliver a calf from a cow, while I looked like a Japanese wrestler as I poked back the flesh that was squeezing out wherever it could, like icing in a tube.

But… if I had been physically and mentally squashed by the first bra, the second delivered me from hell. I couldn’t stop admiring and touching my newly shaped and re-defined breasts. They were marvellous! I do not use the term flippantly, as if by some lycra miracle, I had been transformed into cat woman.   

I preened and pranced around the change rooms like a pony! The gorgeous and ever so helpful highly-trained-fitness-and-exercise-consultants applauded en masse. I was stricken by the grandiose idea that I was now an official athlete, because only we athletes could look and feel so good with our perky breasts. My elation knew no bounds “I’ll take two and one of those pink, tiny tank tops too!” The stunning and incredibly talented sales assistants tossed their golden heads and flittered around me like Greek goddesses, sporty and athletic Greek goddesses, who had probably been in an Olympic event or two at some stage and, like me, knew the benefits of a good sports bra.

So, now all that’s left to do is run 12 kilometres sometime in September along with thousands of others. But I’ll be sure to stand out in the crowd, as I prance along in my giddy-up bra, tantalising onlookers with the sparkly bits.