You're only as old as you feel

It always comes as something of a shock to me when I remember that I am (much) closer to my 30th birthday than I am to my 16th.

A decade may have passed since I became old enough to legally smoke, ride a motorbike and engage in other adult activities, but I don't feel much different.

True, I may weigh two stone more than I did back then, and have gained an inch or two in height but mentally, I don't really feel too much different.

Although my thoughts are now occasionally filled with work, mortgages and other grown-up thoughts, large protions of my day are still spend musing over such pressing topics as football, music and women.

This is no real change from my teenage years, and if we substitute work for school and mortgage for drinking money, my thoughts are pretty much the same as they were back in my school days.

Even today, I cannot resist sliding across a tiled floor when wearing only socks on my feet. If I set eyes on a football, I feel an irresistable urge to kick it, and if I spy a guitar, I can't help but attempt to bash out a tune on it.

But, despite my brain's desire to remain a teenager forever, sadly it is not to be.

During my teenage years, I was, believe it or not, a sprinter. I have recently been training with a local football club, my first concerted exercise in a good few years.

Back in my teenage prime, I would have been the fastest player at the club. Today, I am the slowest, by a considerable margin.

What worries me most about this depressing statistic is that amongst my team mates are several who are well over 30 and some who are heavy smokers. I'm even slower than the goalkeepers.

Whilst I can laugh it off, regaling the others with my assertion that as my Laudrup-like pace has deserted me, I have developed a Gascoigne-esque ability on the ball, not to mention the weight to resist full-bodied challenges more readily, in actual fact it is embarrasing.

Which is why I have splashed out on a brand new mountain bike, which I am determined will transform me into a rippling mass of muscle and a winger so fast that no-one in the team will see me for dust during training.

So, if anyone driving through Argyll in the near future sees a fat, red-faced cyclist struggling to travel more than a few metres, pleaase don't stop. It's just my attempt to recapture my teenage glory years before it's too late.