Rewind to 1970 (or maybe 71)
School PE was football in the winter, or running round in circles if you weren't good enough for cricket, in the summer.
For those of you who know that London, school was in Crouch End and the playing fields were in Winchmore Hill - Really convenient! (The school was near Harringay station and has been demolished; the playing fields were next to the Police Station in WH, I think there's a Sainsburys there now).
We were given prepaid bus tickets for the journey - which led to a huge black market in these tickets as small boys became expert at fiddling the system.
My way of making an extra couple of bob a week was to cycle to the (so called) games for the afternoon, and sell on the bus tickets.
But - I never made any secret of my disdain for team sports (or any other form of exercise except cycling).
Eventually the PE masters* tumbled to my dislike of their chosen form of brutality, and after a short period of negotiation, it was agreed that I would spend games afternoons cycling.
I seem to recall that I did actually cycle further than home on a couple of occasions! I also seem to recall that if I was asked where I'd been, I'd give a precis of the previous Sunday's CTC section ride.
I never did get caught out, but when my bike was stolen from school, because it was recognised that I was a 'serious cyclist' I was allowed to keep my 'new' bike in a Seekrit Bunker under the headmaster's office!
The thing that school 'sport' taught me for life was how to screw the system.
*(we had masters, not teachers, and certainly never, ever a female. And, I am convinced to this day that one of the PE masters was a card carrying paedophile^)
^(Weren't they all prior to about 1980?)