I said goodbye to jogging 11 years ago, the day George gave me a going over in Glasgow. He was the physio at the Western Baths Club, close to BBC Scotland's headquarters, where I was presenting a television series. Since my schooldays I had known that either or both of my knees could let me down at any time, but I had nevertheless persevered with jogging.
That summer, though, after each morning circuit of the Botanic Gardens the twinges were getting worse, to the alarm of my colleagues. As I hobbled into work one day the editor, concerned that his presenter might soon be incapable of standing up, suggested, nay insisted, that I go and see George.
George was ex-army, massively built, with biceps as big as thighs.
"First of all," he said, pointing to the massage table, "let's find out about you."
He pummelled, pushed, prodded and tweaked, diffusing pain through every nook and cranny of my being. Then he told me to sit up, which was harder to do than it sounds.
Red-faced from his efforts, he stared at me.
"What kind of exercise do you take?"
"Jogging mostly," I said.
This clearly puzzled him. "You're telling me you're a jogger?"
"That's right."
"So tell me something else. Do you use that body or do you rent another one?"
Show was over
Curtain lines don't come much better. Not the fat lady, but the beefy sergeant, had sung. He made it clear that the show was over, that my long-suffering knees could take no more.
The only sane option was to stop, and I did stop, but I still wish I didn't have to. It's not just the physical exercise I miss - there are, after all, other less damaging ways of keeping fit - but the whole jogging experience. Recently I came across an article by a Jesuit theologian who often starts his day with a five-mile run. He says he can feel God's presence in his lungs, his legs, his blood and his sweat. "God is running with me, carrying me through the day that is on my horizon."
The words took me back to my own crack-of-dawn canterings. Maybe I wasn't actively aware of divine companionship, but I did have that feeling of being able to address the day ahead without stress. Problems and opportunities, professional and personal, would not just make themselves known but would suggest how they might be managed. Perhaps my gentle pace had something to do with this and, believe me, it was gentle. My two sons came with me on a few outings but had to give up.
"Sorry Dad," said the elder one, "we're not able to run so slowly."
He was nine at the time.
The Jesuit jogger strikes another chord too: "I look all around me for the Kingdom." As he runs, he says, he takes in everything and everything enhances life. Pedestrians, bikers, drivers, buildings, grass, river, swans. On many mornings in many countries that's how it was for me.
Seafront in Havana
I remember cool, dark woods outside Independence, Missouri, where I was filming a programme about Harry Truman. Many summers before me, I thought, the local boy who would one day reach the White House might have made his way along the same winding track. I remember the seafront in Havana and being offered a drink of water by some giggling Cuban girls who seemed to have guessed the condition of my knees.
In a park in Taipei where locals gather for communal exercise I was lost in wonder at their grace and suppleness. And there was that winter morning on the streets of Moscow. As I pounded through driving snow in my tracksuit I could sense the ridicule of passers-by who pretended to ignore me.
As for fitness targets, the only one I ever set myself was modest, though the rest of my lifestyle made it a constant challenge. I was trying simply to break even, to compensate for self-inflicted wounds, to regain ground that tended to be lost in the small hours in shady places.
Drinking and smoking
It was Neil Kinnock who once summed up this approach when I arrived for an interview with him as leader of the British Labour Party. We had known each other for years, from his early days as a backbench MP.
"This is the only man I've met," he said, introducing me to a colleague, "who jogs to get fit for drinking and smoking."
Not any more, though. But if jogging is out, so too, at least, is smoking. For the rest, well, walking the hills behind my West Cork home keeps me more or less up with the game.
Sadly, however, what it does not do is keep the figure as trim as jogging once did. A conversation I recently overheard in Dublin had a punchline to make me wince.
Spread across a park bench was a well-fed middle-aged man, reading his paper. A jogger came by, of similar vintage, but lean and lithe. They knew each other and got talking.
"How often d'ya do this?" asked the man on the bench.
"Every day if I can."
"Sure that's great. I'd do it meself, y'know, only I'm too fat."