My logic was impeccable. If I clicked on the screen, the money would flow immediately from my bank account to theirs, and then I’d simply have to go. Then in no way could I write it off as a bad idea. Surely not. Cash - which, like many people these days, I couldn’t afford to lose and didn’t really have anyway - had spoken, and raised the stakes in the battle which had raged between my best intentions and worst fears for far too long.

 

I parked the car, grabbed my bag (which had been packed hastily and inaccurately on the frankly troublesome “it’s-now-or-never” principle), and walked to the entrance, becoming more convinced with every step that I was now somewhere from which I should forever stay a country mile. Through the window I could see confidence, competence, proficiency; qualities which would surely remain as alien to me in this place as the place itself. Checking the number I had been sent online just half an hour earlier, I entered the digits into the keypad and forced myself through the turnstile.

 

The gym owners will never know how close they came at that point to simply banking my cash forever.

 

Every fear, paranoia, suspicion I’d ever had about gyms - and for that matter any form of physical exercise willingly fulfilled - seemed to enter and ring the clarion bell of truth in my head simultaneously. I made my way deep into enemy territory: scanning, surveying, assessing the new and hostile environment into which I had inexplicably jumped. It seemed I was in a room full of people who had as much right to be there as I didn’t; as they ran, lifted, pulled, stretched, cycled, spun and sweated, the only physical activity in which I wanted to engage at that moment was whichever one got me back to my car and out of there as quickly as humanly possible. I was surrounded by banks of machines with terrifying names and which looked like they’d been hauled off the set of the “Saw” films; imagine Jigsaw intoning “Would you like to play a game? Let’s play the converging shoulder press…”

 

I turned, and started walking to the turnstile, stabbing sweatily at my phone to remind myself of the number I’d entered just minutes before, although it seemed like much longer. But as I bid farewell forever to the money I’d paid, and prepared to do the same to the room I was desperate to leave, I caught sight of what I would soon learn was a rowing machine. Tucked away in a relatively quiet corner, it had a seat. This was appealing, at least in ways that so much else around me was not. Seeing a chance to seize a small victory over my own fears, I sat down.

 

With my heart pounding and leaping into my mouth (and not because of any virtuous cardiovascular activity, of course), I placed my feet into the stirrups and started to row. Or at least I would have done if I’d realised that the stirrups were adjustable and not simply assumed that my feet were too big for the machine. Once I’d determined that the problem was no more complex than the previous user simply not also having size twelves, I strapped myself in, grabbed the handles, and started to engage in literally the first exercise of any kind since I’d been forced to do at school so by the most loathsomely uninspiring teacher in the history of education.

 

That was six months ago, and if I’m now not in the gym at least five times a week I’m either drunk or on holiday; not that going while enjoying the latter is unheard of. To friends and family, this is a source of continuing amazement. If I had a pound for every time I’ve been asked what made me join a gym in the first place, I’d have enough to pay my membership many times over, and yours too. The answer is simple, or at least it is in retrospect. It’s vanity. It not being possible to actually be 23 years of age again, I’ve settled for the next best achievable thing: to capture a vague similarity to some of the physical features I displayed at that age, and it seems that thinness ticks the box most readily. I found a picture the other day which was taken of me perhaps eighteen months ago, a year prior to my gymnastic Damascus; to say that I look twelve years younger now would be arrogant and conceited. So let me simply say: I looked twelve years older then.

 

Anyway, that initial row of 2000 metres is now a daily minimum of 10k, to which I add an hour on the bikes (15k perhaps?) and maybe another 5k on the treadmill. I’m a man, I like numbers, so here are some more: I’ve dropped from 87kg to 71kg, at 182cm tall this seems fair; I usually burn (according at least to the slightly optimistic counters on each machine) around 1000 calories on each visit, and on a good day that 10k row takes 48 minutes, which depending on my somewhat contradictory mood is just long enough for either a playlist of Guetta, Calvin Harris and DJ Fresh, or the podcast of “Any Questions?” from Radio 4.

 

And as for the money feared wasted on that frightened February day? A rough calculation suggests I’ve spent something like 29p each hour I’ve been at the gym. It seems my logic was impeccable after all - I just didn’t know it.