Fionola Meredithlearned to hate exercise as a schoolgirl. So hitting the road to get fit has brought bad memories flooding back - and made her outraged muscles cry out for mercy
It was the big bottle-green knickers that started it. Galumphing around the school sports hall in those voluminous pants while the cold-eyed games mistress barked orders instilled in me a deep-seated hatred of sport and fitness that lingers to this day. It didn't help that I was woeful at school games, of course. I hated the noisy competitiveness, the pointless repetition, the seemingly random exercise of aggressive authority. The early ineptitude and aversion were compounded by my PE teachers' indifference, and occasional hostility, to me and anyone else who didn't excel at sport.
I fought back in the only way I knew how: skiving off PE lessons with a like-minded friend - we hid in the changingrooms, eating cake and reading novels - and cultivating a withering intellectual contempt for the games department and the bovine-brained types who dwelled there.
But you can't run away from exercise forever. Sooner or later, whether it's for reasons of general health or expanding girth, you've got to find a way to get fit. And it seems foolish to let nasty memories of shouty, thunder-thighed PE teachers, and old feelings of ambivalence and mistrust about sport, hold you back.
That's why, aged 33 and with decades of fierce resistance behind me, I have taken up running. Every other day, for the past month, I have pulled on my runners, jacked up my sports bra - winningly named Shock Absorber - and taken to the highways and byways near my home for 30 minutes of sheer effort. My hitherto cossetted body has reacted with shocked indignation: most of my muscles are outraged, begging for mercy.
The whole enterprise requires a vertiginous mental leap, a sharp reversal of my previously exercise-averse lifestyle. It's not just the physical effort of running that's difficult; in some ways, that's the easy bit. All the old snobbery about exercise has to be discarded. Even entering a harshly-lit sports store - I had to go there for the bra and runners - with its hard-bodied assistants and vaguely gynaecological-looking equipment, seems alien. Much to the amusement of my other half, who happens to be a real running enthusiast, for whom a 12-kilometre run is a quick jog, I keep my large, Maria Callas-style sunglasses on while running, as a disguise, and pray that I don't meet anyone I know. I just don't see myself as a runner, you see. Yet.
It's not the first time I have tried to get fit. A couple of years ago I threw myself into a flurry of intense sessions at the gym. But its grim functionality repelled me: the harsh overhead lights; the tedium of the exercise; the sweat-saturated atmosphere. It didn't last.
So why choose running? Well, at least I can do it in God's good fresh air, and lolloping through a meadowful of buttercups and cow parsley on a summer evening is good for the soul in a way that toiling away on an uncomfortable exercise bike certainly isn't. But I'm also tempted by the mental health benefits that running is said to offer. Could it be a cure for my troublesome existential angst? One friend is convinced of it. "Ah, running. It's nature's Prozac," he says. "I run a few miles every day - except hangover days - in order to keep myself sane." It's that psycho-physical boost I crave, as much as any waist-whittling that running might bring.
The thing is, I know I'm not alone in my long-standing fitness phobia. Gym membership may be increasing, but study after study reveals that many of us - and, yes, it's often women in particular - shudder at the thought of exercise. Prof Craig Mahoney, a leading British sports psychologist, says: "It's very easy for us to generate negative impressions of what exercise is about, particularly if we've had poor experiences of physical activity during our schooldays. This is a major condition, particularly among women, and it is difficult to turn around."
A report on perceptions of fitness in teenage girls, by Prof Helen Haste of Bath University, picks up on the same theme. In My Body, My SelfHaste wrote that "there was a tension between wanting to improve their appearance but at the same time being anxious about how they looked in exercise clothes, and exercising in front of other people. The conclusion that we reached was that we needed to be able to provide facilities to allow girls to exercise without confronting that tension".
Although big PE knickers may have been long consigned to the lost-property room of history, and the emphasis is now much more on fun, non-competitive participation in school games, it's evident that many teenage girls still struggle with a sense of embarrassment and discomfort around fitness.
That's something that Breda, a 28-year-old, can empathise with. Her unpleasant experience of school sports still rankles with her. "I had the most evil, sadistic PE teacher. She would make us go for five-mile runs and drive in her car behind us, shouting: 'Faster, girls!' She quickly picked up that I was no good at sports, and she took pleasure in humiliating me in front of the rest of the class. That's the thing about school sports: it's so public. I was quite capable academically, but that's less visible. With sports, if you weren't good, everyone knew about it. And popularity at school is so closely aligned with ability on the sports field. If you were nerdy or geeky, well, forget it."
Breda is convinced that these early encounters damaged her ability to enjoy exercise as an adult. "You see sport as something to be feared. Going to the gym or an aerobics class makes you break out in a cold sweat. You dread that you might be exposed as being inadequate somehow, that you just aren't good enough, that you don't belong there."
Of course, plenty of sport-averse people don't have the excuse of having encountered the games teacher from hell at school. Máire, a 40-year-old, says: "It was quite simply the sweating and exertion that I didn't like as a teenager, and I still dislike it. I'd rather mow the lawn than wheeze away for hours on a treadmill. There's something so useless and pointless about that."
Máire has made several abortive attempts to get fit since turning 40, last year. "Last September I bought a really expensive, beautiful bike, and at first it was wonderful - scooting off to work through the park, the wind in my hair, feeling really smug. But after a bit I started taking the car again. I'm ashamed to look at that bike now. I kept it in the hallway of our house, but the kids kept on tripping over it, so I put it in the backyard. It's been there all winter, and it's a write-off - totally covered in rust. Honestly, I'm disgusted with myself."
So is there any hope for shirkers and malingerers? How can we keep at it when the going gets tough?
Tony Matthews, a personal trainer with Life Gym in Dundalk, Co Louth, says customised exercise programmes are the answer: one-to-one attention in a safe, controlled environment. A trainer, if you can afford one, will make sure you're doing the right exercises, in the correct way, and will give you a "friendly kick" to make sure you work to your maximum potential. So there'll be no sloping off for a coffee and a cigarette mid-workout. "A good result in a short space of time inspires people to continue," says Matthews. "It helps to have a mental picture of where you want to be: your ideal weight and body-fat percentage. If you have someone in mind, perhaps a celebrity, then that's a big incentive."
But if envisaging the willowy form of Kate Moss as you force your lardy body into unaccustomed action doesn't do it for you, then there is another option: hypnosis. Niamh Flynn, a Galway-based sports psychologist and hypnotherapist, believes hypnosis can trigger a different attitude towards exercise very quickly. According to Flynn, it's all about "teaching your inner mind new habits, new thoughts and feelings towards food and exercise".
However you get in touch with your inner willpower, us exercisephobics know better than most that it will be a long, hard struggle to reach - and maintain - real fitness. I'm still waiting for that transcendent moment when I feel the wind at my heels and running becomes an effortless glide. Until then I just have to try to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
• You can contact Tony Matthews at www.lifegym.ie and Niamh Flynn at www.bodywatch.ie