First appeared in the Ealing & Acton Gazette on August 3rd 2007
 At school I was OK at maths and English, so it didn’t bother me much that I turned into a hobbled troll during PE. My parents, my friends and especially my netball team-mates totally accepted that I wasn’t a sporty type, and it was best for all if my impotent flailing was kept to the back of the gym/pitch/court.
Then my brother started Judo. And a few weeks later, so did I. I had found it – the activity for me.
My Judo club ran three squash courts too, so the squashies and the judos often met in the bar area. One evening, I was surprised to see my PE teacher with some friends, bristling with squash racquets. “How amazing to see you here” she said to me. “I never had you down as a physical type”.
I was stunned by her cheek. After all, disliking standing in the drizzle in very little more than underwear while having a wet netball smack you in the face was surely not the only standard of joy at exercise? If it wasn’t for the shivering, I’d have fallen asleep with the tedium.
It wasn’t that I was bad at exercise, I was just didn’t care for PE at school and they’re not the same thing. I was so lucky to have found the Judo. It led to Aikido, weight training for upper
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After the Race for Life with Mary Hyde, runner of the London Marathon, 1989
body strength, a little bit of Karate … and eventually training as a health instructor at the Cooper institute in Dallas Texas. I learned to swim in my late twenties and took up running when I was forty.
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