I have never been interested in taking part in sport.  I’ve just never found it an enjoyable activity, sure I played football as a kid, and tennis in the street for two weeks of the year, but it wasn’t something I found engaging.  I don’t think PE at school helped, but I wouldn’t say it stopped me either, I just never enjoyed it.

And I never liked the idea of exercise for the sake of it.  Running is great if you enjoy running, but running purely because you feel it is good for you never sat well with me.  That probably explains most of the motivation for things I do – but anyway that’s a different story.

I’ve had a pretty sedate lifestyle (I know, with my physique you would never have guessed right?), although never being able to drive meant I spent my teens, 20’s and early 30’s doing a lot of walking, but these days it’s slowed even more.  We’ve not done any LRP events for 5 years or so, and my job is even more desk bound than it used to be.

There have been a couple of events over the last 12 months which left me feeling embarrassed or frustrated at how out of breath I was.  So I’ve been wanting to make a change.

But the real inspiration for what I’ve done (more in a bit) is Grete (@randomwittering on twitter, and owner of Bookthing, on twitter as @bookthing_uk), my amazing wife.  Grete has been going to the gym (and aqua aerobics) for nearly 2 years now.  I’ve been talking about maybe going for about 12 months, and I finally took the plunge a few weeks ago.  I had two inductions at the local council run gym, the first was good, the second less so.

But I eventually went for a full session with Grete, and have been a couple of times a week now for the past month and a bit with a short break.  I won’t say I enjoy it, it is after all, exercise for the sake of it in its most pure form.  I mean let’s be honest, walking at 5.5km/hour for 10 minutes with varying inclines is great except you never actually go anywhere.  So no, I don’t enjoy it, but it does make me feel good.

It makes me feel like I’ve made a positive change in my life which will hopefully result in things being better.  I’m never really going to change my eating habits a great deal these days – I made that change when I found I was diabetic and I’m just about living on the edge of what I can tolerate food-wise (although the last 12 months have slipped a little).  So I needed to make another change.  I’m not fit enough to ‘do sport’ even if I wanted to (which I don’t, maybe American Football, but not much else), and the advantage the gym has is that at least what you do varies during the 90 minutes or so you’re there.

So, thank you Grete for inspiring me to go to the gym, and for inspiring me to make a positive change in my life.

I can’t stop having the bacon cobs for breakfast, but at least I can burn off some of the calories walking nowhere for 10 minutes.