Sport is a bit like Marmite. You either love it or hate it. I won a running race at primary school once and reached the heady heights of the under-12 netball team a few times but that’s about it. Until two months ago, that is. My teenage daughter suddenly decided to join the gym and after a few sessions declared it would be much more fun if we went together. I was horrified and refused point-blank – except that she went on and on about it so much that eventually I gave in.
The gym staff insisted I had an induction session to discuss what I wanted to achieve (their words, not mine). “Not that much” was my response. As they explained the minutiae of the treadmill, exercise bike, cross-trainer and other scary-looking machines, I glanced around at the other members, all honed and bronzed and with legs up to their armpits. “I’m worried that I’m going to be the oldest person here,” I told the instructor, who looked about twelve. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” he said airily. “Our oldest member is eighty-five.”
What to wear was the next problem. I picked out an old T-shirt, some £5 jogging bottoms from Sainsbury’s and a pair of plimsolls that had seen better days. “You look completely ridiculous,” said my daughter. She was so embarrassed to be seen with me that she frogmarched me straight to a sports shop and made me buy some proper trainers. Next she persuaded me to order some stylish Sweaty Betty trousers. The only trouble is that the dreadful joggers are far more comfy.
So what have I learned after eight weeks of my new keep-fit regime? Mainly that the gym is just as boring as I thought it would be. In fact it is so tedious that I’ve resorted to planning it around TV programmes I want to watch. The upshot is that I’m no fitter than when I started (mainly, says my daughter, because, I don’t “push myself enough”) but I’m very well up on the news.
PS: I haven’t spotted any eighty-five year olds pounding away on the treadmill. Either the instructor was fibbing or the gym has had such a stupendous effect that that eighty-five year old member looks twenty-five.
