gym | Twin brothers swimming, cycling and running in Scotland

I grew up before sexual equality was invented. Sexual discrimination was rife against girls although very occasionally it was against boys.

At my primary school boys and girls received two physical education lessons a week. They were taken by a female teacher. The boys and girls would get changed. The class would start. The teacher would tell the boys to stand at the side of the gym. She’d then let the girls play games for 40 minutes before letting the boys have 20 minutes at the end.

She once made the boys stand for the whole hour. The boys didn’t get a single minute of exercise!

Years later I got my revenge on her. I had a job as a paper boy. The gym teacher was on my round. She liked the Scotsman. She hated the Daily Record. Whenever there was no Scotsman’s in stock I’d put a Daily Record through her door instead.

BUT what I’ve realised is that I didn’t get my revenge. What I’d done was assume a male privilege that I as a man deserved to be treated better so I must have been discriminated against. Actually what she had done was very clever. She knew the boys got lots of exercise. We played football before school, every break and after school. If we weren’t in the classroom we we’re on the football pitch.

The girls, on the other hand, got very little exercise. There were no facilities for them to play at breaks and no encouragement from any teacher to do exercise. Therefore she used the two chance she had to get them to do exercise as they needed support more than the boys did.

I wasn’t discriminated against for losing P.E time. I was privileged to get every other bit of time!

I’m sorry I gave her the Daily Record. It’s a sh*t paper.

Andrew and I used to go to the same gym. It was a corporate shed in a posh suburb of Glasgow. The people who went were so rich the car park looked like a Range Rover showroom.

The gym had every facility two ‘world class triathletes’ could possibly need – state of the art gym, state of the art weights and a state of the art pool. Everything was state of the art, except the art – that came from Ikea.

Unfortunately back then the only thing we were world class at was our ability to use a Jacuzzi.

Some people say there’s nothing better than jumping in a jacuzzi after a hard gym session. They’re wrong. It’s even better if you’ve not used the gym! Why work up a sweat and get tired when you could have spent that time floating in soapy bubbles?

We’d head in and spend ten minutes in the jacuzzi but then we’d get out and get in the other jacuzzi. Yes – this gym was so posh it had two jacuzzis. At least we got some exercise walking between the two.

We didn’t just use the two jacuzzis. We’d often get out and head to the pool…and then past the pool to the sauna. The sauna in any Glasgow gym is predominately a male environment. I’ve often thought the main reason women pay so much for a spa is to avoid sauna-ing with men.

This sauna never had any women but three bald men were always there. Sometimes just one of them, sometimes two but often all three. We called them the “Baldy Men Club”

A sauna is quite small so we could hear their conversation. They only had one topic – themselves. Namely, how well they had used the gym before getting to the sauna.

Week after week. We’d listen as each tried to out compete each other.

“I just did 10K on the running machine in 30 minutes” One would say. Another would reply “Did you bike 20K first? I always bike first and then run”. The third man would try to beat this and add: “Did I mention I bench pressed three time my body weight today and I didn’t even sweat once?”

We talked about the baldy men club and their strange ways until we realised when we’re not there they probably did the same to us – “Can you believe how much nonsense they talk? One of them claims he’s done Norseman but the only exercise I’ve seen him do is dry himself with a towel after the jacuzzi!”

For the last few years we’ve been members of different Gym’s but as of this week we’re both members of the same one. It has a sauna…so welcome back twin club!

PS – I once saw a bald man bring shampoo into a shower. I turned to Andrew and said “What does he need that for?” The man heard me and replied: “Bald men get dandruff too!” I learnt something new that day!