It is not easy to work out, six days a week, for the rest of your life. And one of the things that makes it hard is waking up and saying to yourself, “I don’t feel good.” And deciding to stay home that day. Happens all the time.

Here is some superb advice from someone who knows the syndrome well: Don’t.

Unless you have a temperature… or are projectile vomiting… or are bleeding from your poor old rectum, just heave a deep sigh, get up and go out the door. One of two things will happen, in my experience. Once in a great while, you’ll continue to feel like dog-meat in the gym, on the bike or whatever, and you can come home in, say, half an hour. Excellent.

BUT… in the vast majority of cases, after twenty minutes you don’t remember feeling lousy.In fact, exercise is mostly a cure for feeling lousy. Before you have time to really stop sulking, damned if you don’t feel great.

Like this morning. Woke up and thought, “I don’t feel good.” But – like the Great American I am – I got up and drove crankily over to the lake anyhow, launched the damned single scull, and started paddling along. In ten minutes, I had forgotten that I felt lousy and meant to go home in half an hour. Inexplicably, I suddenly felt wonderful. Weird, but it happens all the time. Exercise often works precisely that way. There have been days when I continued to feel dreadful and soon came home. But not many. The exercise takes over your head as well as your body. And damned if you don’t feel wonderful. Not just okay… wonderful. It’s weird. And true. And important.