EXERCISE is great for your mental wellbeing because you can hide from your family and your problems in a cowardly way. Here are the best sports for avoiding real life.

Golf 

It takes around three hours to play 18 holes. That’s long enough to almost forget you’ve got a family and imagine you’re still single and in your 20s, even though you’re surrounded by paunchy middle-aged blokes like yourself discussing their net worth.

Marathons 

Marathons take months to train for, which is a fantastic amount of time away from your domestic hell. And if you really crack up, you’ll be able to run and run like Forrest Gump and start a new life somewhere far away like Inverness.

Triathlons 

Like a marathon, but with two other disciplines you’ll be away from home more than an oil rig worker. Training for a triathlon is also so mentally demanding you just won’t have time to think about how sh*t your job is and how your life has gone horribly, horribly wrong. 

Fishing 

With no actual exercise to speak of and mainly consisting of sitting on a riverbank, fishing is a perfect opportunity to dwell on all the ways life might have turned out. This will either make you very depressed, or you’ll go rushing back to your family in terror at what might have actually happened, eg. sitting alone on a riverbank fishing and drinking a can of cider.

Skateboarding

Taking up skateboarding in your 40s is a great physical workout with the bonus of a whole new social scene. Best of all you’ll never see your family because they won’t want to associate with an embarrassing dad who hangs out with teenagers and uses the word ‘rad’.