No sport – but plenty of exercise

I am really not a sporty person. I have never enjoyed playing, watching or even reading about sports.

At school, physical education was my least favourite subject and I used to spend all week trying to invent an imaginative but believable excuse to avoid it that week. If you couldn’t participate in physical education classes, you had to sit outside the gym hall and copy out sheets of information on how the muscles in the leg worked. It was incredibly boring but I always preferred it to heading out into the cold Scottish winters to chase a ball around a field. When I did go out to play sports, it was quite obvious that I was not interested in being there. When dribbling the hockey ball, I used to walk, not run. In squash, there were only three courts so I used to spend the whole class avoiding playing at all (not a good idea – I was sent to the head teacher for that one).

After leaving school, I thought that I would finally be able to avoid sports for the rest of my life. Of course, that was a big fat lie. At university my best friend loved watching football and would insist that I watch it with him in the pub. I used to go, but always took a book with me. While the game was on, he would watch it and I would read. After the game we would talk but never about the football match. Or my book, for that matter.

I have more or less successfully avoided sports since leaving university but, unfortunately, I am sometimes forced to play. Whenever you live away from home you do need to make friends and sports are a great way to do that. I have played football or basketball with new friends (because I was too scared and too lonely to say no) but, apart from that I have successfully avoided sports.

In spite of my dislike of sports, I am nonetheless aware that exercise is very important. I have always liked walking, for example, and I will sometimes go out for a bike ride with friends.

After so many years of hating physical education classes and playing competitive sports, I finally realised that sports weren’t important – what is important, though, is doing some exercise and keeping fit.