This Sporting Life (or lack of).

My hatred of physical exercise stems from childhood. I mean it sucks. It is pressurising. It is responsible for your social standing at school. I blame the time honoured tradition of sports days. School sports days are satanic. There is no other way of putting it. They are put in place solely to commit evil, to pick out the weaklings and stamp all over what remains of their dwindling self esteem. It is the teacher’s revenge. There are always two camps of children that take part in sports days. A) The popular, healthy sprightly child who always gets top billing in the school plays, and B) the spotty, slightly podgy kid who always plays livestock in the school plays. Usually sheep, perhaps a reindeer in the nativity if lucky. Guess which one I was?

                             

Now you might think, given my searing good looks and devilish figure that I was child A) but I must disappoint. I hated sport and it all stems from bloody sports day.

                         

 I mean, isn’t it cruel enough to force the unsporty kids to take part in the 100 metre sprint, even more so the long distance. Everyone laughs and cheers as the chubby little blonde kid with a blotched red face (not dissimilar to a boozy Glaswegian on a winter pub crawl) is overlapped by child A. The parents laugh and cheer, the child’s testosterone fuelled father has his head in his hands. It’s all over. He will never see his son on the rugby team. Does the alternative mean drama? Or joining the choir? Dear god, it doesn’t bear thinking about. He might as well come out now!

Alas, the worst is still to come. To the truly terribly unsporty children, they must pay for their lack of co ordination, their lack of endurance and their disgusting lack of competitiveness. Welcome the obstacle relay race... Tubular bells. I’d rather be put on the rack, dunked and disembowelled than participate in an obstacle relay race ever again. To engage children in self flagellation via obstacle courses is pure barbarity of medieval levels! I was eight years old. My race ended in disaster. After successfully putting on five layers of clothing, not dropping the egg in the egg and spoon race and progressing to the rubber ring over the waist sprint, I realised I was miles ahead of the other ‘reject’ kids. Fantastic. This was my big chance. Alas I was thwarted. Some stupid (cunning?) mother had provided a baby’s rubber ring in my lane, a ring so small that I couldn’t get it past my bloody thighs. Cue very embarrassing prolonged twoddle to the finish line, last by a mile, where a baying mob exploded with laughter as two teachers mustered all their strength to attempt to release me from the ring. They eventually had to deflate it to get me out.

Since that horrific experience, forever ingrained in my mind, I have had a very lack lustre approach to sport my whole life. I hated swimming because I belly flopped when I dived. Hockey was good for rage but incredibly tedious. Netball was the girls ‘elite’ sport and I had butter fingers. I was, for a short period, good at rounders due to being left handed, but as soon as the fielders cottoned on, they always caught me out. The more sports we did, the more I hid in the toilet. I never went to the gym in my late teenage years and had a serious aversion to anything strenuous. This attitude progressed to university where the most amount of exercise I ever got was running to One Stop during the X Factor breaks to procure space raiders.

In light of my unhealthy past, I decided to join the gym down my road.  However this provided other issues. A rant is brewing up. Firstly I had to have a stupid induction where I was patronised by some foetus boy, barely out of nappies who was explaining to me what a rowing machine was with the pomposity of a disc jockey who had just ‘discovered’ a new band. He then proceeded to write me out a card of his recommendations. Apparently I am only fit for 15minutes of exercise per day. After expelling all my mental energy on imagining foetus boy in painful scenarios (mainly involving a baby’s rubber ring on sports day) I caved in but gave him what I hoped was my most effective Stafford dirty look. Since then I have been going to the gym semi regularly and as a result have now acquired some gym pet peeves. They are, as follows:

1)      Those private school, stay at home mums who have spent so long in the gym that their arms are nothing more than a sinewy mat of crossed veins and tissue-like stringiness. That combined with the walnut fake tan that they seem to love so much, makes for uncomfortable viewing. Think Madonna meets Bride of Chucky.

2)      Those private school, stay at home mums who bring their twelve year old daughters to the gym and plonk them on the treadmill whilst discussing the merits of last week’s colonic irrigation. Children are impressionable and insecure and should be nowhere near a gym. These Stepford Wife drones must be thwarted before they corrupt the next generation. It is wrong. End of.

               

3)      People who spend longer than 30 minutes on the easy exercise bike because they want to finish watching Countdown. For god’s sake, stop hoarding the easy bike! I’m going to miss Horrible Histories!

4)      The young girls who wear a full face of make up to the gym. What is the point! Unless you are coming from work there is no excuse. I found a fake eyelash on a treadmill once, and immediately my imagination went into overdrive. They have finally found a reptilian way to shed skin. Do you really think that the melted baddies from Raider of the Lost Ark look is seriously a better alternative to au natural? Get a grip.

5)      Like a toddler who has just made his first turd in the toilet and is looking for praise, those pumped up men waiting for women to coo and aaah at their steely torsos. If only their brains were as big as their pecs.

                  

Of course this bitterness stems from the fact that I and the dog are both on diets. And despite him thieving a tub of flora off the worktop and finishing off my sandwich, he is still beating me! My new fangled gym membership has failed. Perhaps a tapeworm is all I can hope for now. That or heartbreak.