It's the winning that counts

Exercise and I have never seen eye-to-eye. Actually, I don't see eye-to-eye with very much at all, because 1) I'm 4 foot 11 (150cm, metric fans) and 2) I can only use one eye at a time. And those are two reasons why I'm not a sporty type. I can't play racquet sports, as it's a distinct advantage to have depth perception. I'm not keen on team games because I'll get crushed in the scrum and can't get very far very quickly on my miniature legs.

There are plenty of other reasons why I'm not a sporty type: lack of time, too academic and, here's the clincher, I can't be bothered. Not when there are books to read and blogs to write and the web to explore. Not when I see so little of my husband and daughter. Not when it's raining or cold or hot or windy. It's not that I'm lazy - it's just that there are better things to do.

And then there's the legacy of horror from school. I'm sure these days there are no winners or losers, teams are chosen randomly and all participants are praised equally. I'm sure it's not at all as it was 20 years ago, when PE teachers had their favourite team captains and ignored the less physically gifted, except to shout how useless you were across a wind-blown hockey pitch and then make you take a communal shower (we often showered wearing our full sports kit rather than strip off and display our pubescent bodies to our peers). My friends and I were clever but not cool, so we were chosen last for teams and had no reason to be motivated other than for the opportunity for the four of us to wear our matching "disco" socks to our Wednesday PE lesson as some sort of anti-sports solidarity movement. It got a bit better as we got older, when the PE teachers left us pretty much to ourselves so that they could concentrate on the ones who had been nurtured, so we would pretend to play table tennis and sneak off to do our homework early (yes, I really was that studious). 

None of which helped to build any sort of interest in, or appreciation for, physical exercise. My family, by contrast, were all pretty sporty, but that was something they did - it didn't apply to me.

But then, for reasons I can't quite recall, in the third year of university I discovered jogging. I would get up at 7 each morning, do a lap or two of Christ Church Meadow, shower, breakfast and be at the library for opening time (yes, I really was that studious; talk about a mispent youth). It was fabulous. I was fit, I was energised and I could pack away an extra biscuit or two without it going on my hips. For a year or so, I revised my view of physical exercise, if not PE, and embraced it.

And then I started work, abruptly ran out of leisure time and, for the past 15 years, have sporadically done a little yoga, a little dancing, gone for the occasional very slow run. It was OK. I could have been a little fitter, a little thinner, but I was hardly stationary and obese.

But when you (one, I, we) enter our 30s, a switch flicks somewhere inside us. Suddenly that pint, that cake, that delicious greasy pile of fish and chips start to haunt you. They linger, ghostlike at first but increasingly tangibly, until one day you look in the mirror and see a flabby body that isn't as young as it used to be. And ahead of you stretches a tedious lifetime of the cursed PE.

When I see people with good figures, male or female, my first thought is, "Lucky them". My second thought is, "They've cheated. I bet they have to do lots of exercise to look like that." And then I glare at them for a while, or maybe eat a piece of cake to make myself feel better.

About 18 months ago, I took my extra tummy and me down to the gym for a class or two. I did some step aerobics but co-ordination is not my storng point and I couldn't get the hang of staying upright. As it turned out, the class that I've been going to ever since is the class that, given a long list of options and a slight knowledge of my personality, you (and I) would have put on the bottom of that list. It involves lifting weights to music and is called BodyPump. It is fantastic - definitely one for the checklist of inspirational things that I haven't got round to compiling for this site. To paraphrase Kate Bush, I love it and I hate it too. I now look like this - Wonderwoman with a barbell. 

Well, actually, I don't, and I'm very surprised she looks like that either, lifting pathetic 1.25s, by the look of it - you'll never get decent biceps that way. Mine are looking pretty good under the flab. But you need to do a lot more than an hour's intensive weightlifting every week to get truly fit and toned. So now, at last, I've cheated too - I've joined the gym itself and will, from now on, be found most mornings running up imaginary hills while watching Jeremy Kyle berate truculant layabouts via subtitles on the big screen.

And my point is? There are several - take your pick. The glib one is that you have to put effort into anything for it to pay off. The stern one is that you have to get over your childhood hangups once you're old enough to make your own decisions. The realistic one is that it's hard to do what needs to be done, but do it anyway. And the inspiration for the cynical? Try something new. You never know, you might find you enjoy heaving a good proportion of your own body weight around on a stick to cover versions of beat-heavy hits. And even if you don't enjoy it, try things until you do: it means you can fit a few more slices of cake into your accommodating body.