Abandoning oneself to the tummy crunch has always been therapeutic for Angela Long.

When Hollywood star Sharon Stone had a serious health scare last year after a bout of over-activity at the gym, certain friends and relations looked in my direction with pursed lips and frowns, fingers raised to wag.

"It could happen to you" was the faint ghostly subtext, as Ms Stone recovered in hospital from a mini-stroke, the type which is supposed to result from overstress and repeated strenuous activity.

Obsessed as I have been with gyms various since I was a teenager, however, the well-wishers need not have worried. The one gym instruction I always carry out is the sign that says: "Stop exercising if you feel unwell." Unwell can be stretched to include feelings of slight nausea, a cough, chipped nail varnish, a desire to watch the Shakira video on the big music screen, need to gossip with a mother from my kids' school . . . and so on.

I have pumped iron, lifted leaden blocks, cycled manically and gyrated idiotically to the Eurhythmics, Madonna, Eminem (and a particularly headsplitting anthem called The Workaholic), all over the world. Up . . . and down; up and down. I have done jazz ballet, circuit training, step, pilates, weight training, body sculpt, you name it (except for Spinning, a particularly brutal form of speed cycling on stationary bikes while an instructor screams what is supposed to be encouragement. I mean, really.)

My gear has evolved from the pristine black leotards of the 1970s into shiny purple Lycra and the obligatory woolly leggings, through three-quarter length trousers and bulletproof bra-tops, to today's unforgiving cycle shorts and numerous tops, with numerous non-parallel straps.

Have I got fit through all this? Well, despite thrice-weekly work-outs, I am still semi-puffed out after galloping up a couple of flights of stairs at The Irish Times (though that could be a psychological as much as a physical malady). I am not overweight, but that owes more to generations of skinny Longs and a diet of corn chips and taramasalata for much of the 1980s, rather than any impressive self-discipline.

And best of all, I am Not Alone.

The incredible growth of personal fitness all over the world was mirrored in Ireland in the years of the You-Know-What Tiger. Iva Pocock reports in these pages tomorrow on the astonishing increase in long-distance commuters (in Louth car registrations went up by a multiple of six in the latter boom years), and while we were all spending much longer in our cars getting to workplaces, many of us were also spending compensatory time in the gym to exercise all those bits that don't do as nature intended while confined inside a Ka or Fiesta for an hour or two getting to work.

One could ruminate philosophically on these twin developments in modern life: car and gym, both a sort of womb, both cut off from the world and yet still part of it (especially if the person in the car behind misunderstood one of those new and now withdrawn traffic signs on their brief trajectory across urban skies). Chant it: car and gym, car and gym . . . it has a hypnotic "om" quality. As has been observed widely, of course, the time spent in the car driving to the gym could be spent going for a brisk walk or doing physical jerks in the back yard, but that is not the way we live now.

August, in fact, gym sources report, tends to be a quiet time. But come September, says Samantha Byrne of Leisure Point fitness centre in Finglas, Dublin, the running shoes are dusted down and the rows of bikes start humming again.

My current gym is very womblike, and comforting. It doesn't matter what the weather is like outside, which has been an especial boon this August. It is dark and warm. Four large screens show Sky News, Sky Sport, MTV and, ergh, RTÉ (bring back the Biography Channel, guys.) There is no need to think deeply, just abandon oneself to physical culture, The staff are all young and beautiful and black clad. One of them told me early in my membership that I had a very tight groin, but apart from that everything is most congenial.

Of course one could be out playing camogie or climbing Mount Errigal. But in our capsulated modern existences, with our generous gouts of rain, that womblike security of the local gym will be getting my vote.