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How I became a middle-aged gym bunny

31 0
23.09.2026

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Perhaps my new-found interest is the result of decades of conditioning by the media

Perhaps my new-found interest is the result of decades of conditioning by the media

When I was a schoolboy, you’d have been unlikely to find the words ‘sporting prowess’ and ‘Philip Womack’ uttered in the same breath. Bar a brief moment aged 13, when, being lankier than my peers, I could win sprints without too much effort, I was always much happier loafing about with my copy of J.K. Huysman’s decadent novel, A Rebours, than I was getting stuck into scrums on the freezing rugby pitches. Always picked last, I would hover by the lines, oblivious to the cries of ‘Catch!’ or whatever else came hurling my way.  My lack of interest in games was certainly not hereditary. I spring from a long line of sporting forebears, with accomplished cricketing ancestors going back four generations. One Victorian ancestress was the All England Women’s Croquet Champion. Yet somehow, the sporting gene seemed to have skipped me. Whilst I’ve always undergone some kind of weekly exercise unwillingly (and often hungover), this was mostly in order to stave off the portly, gout-ridden........

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