I know all about sports snobs – I used to be one. When I was a swimmer I won every bleep test in PE and thought the other girls were total wuss’s. I thought being the best made me better. I was wrong. Cycling in Peru last April certainly made me reflect on how I feel about sport and my relationship to it. Pre-Andean cycle I had to put the shoe on the other foot. Simon and Fearghal left in November 2008 and at that stage I was barely able to run the length of myself.  I hadn’t trained properly in years. I had taken up jogging the year before but it was one month on and three months off. I think a lot of people can relate to this. When you have broken the cycle of exercise and allowed yourself to become unfit and overweight it is really really really hard to get going again.

First there is the psychological struggle with the fear: The fear of looking like a big squidgy muffin in the gym. You think that everybody is looking at you and they know that you don’t belong. When I started jogging again I was embarrassed for about three months because I didn’t think I looked like I ‘belonged’ to the imaginary gang of fit people in my head. I was angry with myself because I knew how easy it had once been to roll out a 10k without even training as I had such good stamina from swimming. I was always picked for cross country in school even though I’m not gifted at running naturally. It was the swimmers stamina. The fear doesn’t disappear. When I went out the other day I thought to myself, here we go, everyone in Blacklion who passes me on the road is going to think I am an eejit. But the opposite happens. People say fair play to you and ask you how you’re getting along. So whatever it takes for a person to get up off the couch – be it a fitness Dvd or a walk in the park or a jog that only takes you halfway up the hill and back down again-there’s one thing guaranteed, you will feel all the better afterwards. And anybody who tells you that your efforts aren’t good enough or that fitness Dvd’s are no good, just remember that they are a sports snob. Tell them Emma said so.

And another thing about fear. You can overcome it. I taught my friend Ruth to swim last year. I won’t tell you her age but she was a mature adult learner. And she had a total fear of the water. Now she tells me she enjoys lying back and floating! You should have seen this girls face when I first mentioned floating! So go on, conquer your fear and show those Sports Snobs a thing or two! Don’t get afraid, get ANGRY!

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