What is stopping women from exercising before or in between working hours

Monday was a tube strike day here in London. It’s not a regular occurrence, thank god, but it does happen a few times a year and it means that trains, buses and trams are running but not the tube. That in turn means that all hell breaks loose because a bazillion people who normally use the tube to get to work/school, use the trains and the buses instead.

I get to work by tube as well but I’m lucky enough to live near a train station as well so on Monday morning I crammed the lightest clothes I could find into my husband’s cycling backpack (it’s so comfy to run in but sooooo tiny), jogged to the train station and squeezed into a train to Waterloo.

As I then ran from Waterloo to my office in Canary Wharf I saw just one other woman running with a backpack. I saw many more men, both running and cycling.

Once a week I run at lunchtime and twice a week I go to Crossfit at lunchtime and – I don’t usually see many women out and about exercising at lunchtime either.

I’m often the only female in the lunchtime Crossfit class and when running on a very busy running route from Canary Wharf to London Bridge and back, I usually see one female for every 10 male runners.  I totally count.

So what is stopping women from exercising right before or in between working hours?

For some it’s probably their work environment – either they have no showers in the office or the nature of the job is such that there are meetings throughout the day and one cannot take a run break.

For many women though, I suspect the reason is their hair.

If you want to have fabulous hair in the office AND want to exercise before or during work – you have to choose one or the other. I’m afraid it’s not possible to have great hair AND a lunchtime exercise habit.

I have obviously chosen the exercise habit – my hair is constantly wet and in a bun. Fitness over fashion. Buns over bouncy locks.

But seriously, even if I could (read: didn’t find blow-drying my hair mind-numbingly boring) take extra time to blow-dry my hair in the office – I can’t actually blow-dry my hair. It’s curly and insanely big and blasting it with heat makes me look like I’ve been electrocuted. I need to either let it air dry, but I’d rather pull it back than sit with dripping wet hair at my desk OR I need to dry it with a rotating Babyliss, but our shower/changing rooms only have built in cheap hairdryers and no electricity sockets for other equipment.

Can’t win.

I didn’t choose the bun life, the bun life chose me.

Oh wait. I did actually choose it.

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Do you exercise right before or during work?
If you do – what’s your hair situation?
If you don’t – what’s stopping you?
Do you think women worry about their hair too much?
Would wet hair be acceptable in your office?