A couple of years ago, I joined a gym. Not just any gym, but the M&S of gyms – those that have all the whistles and bells, a pool, a sauna and a cafe. Hot on the tails of the pandemic, it was a company keen to show solidarity with key workers and so offered an NHS discount, hence I was not obliged to consider a second mortgage to meet the monthly fee.

As is the way with all newbies to a gym, you are obliged to be shown the ropes by a young and keen whippersnapper. I’m never quite sure whether they are more worried that the machines will break you or whether you’ll break the machines. We began with an encounter with the treadmill. As mentioned in a previous blog post, my anatomy is not one of an elite runner. Thus little more than 30 seconds on the machine of death is sufficient to send my face a true beetroot complexion and to send me into a breathless jellied heap.

Trying to be helpful, the youth sent to induct me, suggested that the rowing machine might be good as, “2km would be a good 10-15 minute workout.” Alas, little did he know that whilst I have never won a running race, my living room contains a more than few trophies picked up whilst misspending my university years on the river. There was a quiet correction, to suggest that perhaps 7-8 minutes might be more of a target for 2km (my PB is 7 minutes and 12 seconds). The incredulity to my assertion was not so much barely contained as liberated with the full force of the skepticism as how the middle aged woman standing in front of him might be able to row a machine so quickly.

Thus the moral of this tale is never to underestimate a middle-aged woman…