Military Fitness

When a man in a Tough Mudder t-shirt sprinted past me in the warmup jog, I felt a strong urge to ankle tap him.

Photo by Arek Adeoye on Unsplash

“I’ve signed us up to Military Fitness, Andy.”

“I’m sorry?”

I had no recollection of ever expressing interest in such a thing.

“The first class is a taster so it’s free.”

"Well, in that case..."

This isn’t the first time my wife has made decisions without consulting me.

“Louise, who is that man in our living room?”

“Oh, that’s just Darren. He cleans our carpets.”

“Does a hoover not do this very job?”

“Not well enough. Especially when you do it."

I put my head around the door.

“Hi, Darren.”

I reluctantly agreed to go to Military Fitness but, as we were leaving, threw a strop my teenage self would have been proud of, deliberately dawdling as I put my trainers on.

“Hurry up,” Louise said, “we’re going to be late.”

“GOOD.”

As is usually the case when starting new things with people you don’t know, the opening few minutes - standing around, not knowing what to do with my hands - were unbearable. After raising my eyebrows at a man in a Tough Mudder t-shirt who looked away, a handsome trainer in camouflaged trousers and a very, very tight t-shirt shouted out.

“Fix up, look sharp. Grab your bibs.”

His biceps were the size of my head and he spoke, almost entirely, in clichés.

The bibs indicated difficulty level with red for easiest, blue for medium and green for hardest. This presented a dilemma. While Louise and I are relatively fit (i.e., we once participated in a 5 km inflatable fun run), we will unlikely be competing in an ultramarathon anytime soon and didn’t want to kill ourselves. She suggested we start with red and, keen to avoid being paired with a stranger, I followed suit. As I struggled to pull on what appeared to be a child’s bib, I was aware of a dismissive glance from the man in the Tough Mudder t-shirt. He’d gone for green. Obviously. As he sprinted past me in the warmup jog, I felt a strong urge to ankle-tap him.

We dispersed into our groups and the trainer shouted out.

“Look lively, squad! Double up with someone who is a similar size to you.”

Louise is exactly one foot shorter than me.

So, I spent the next twenty minutes grappling, piggybacking and commando rolling on the floor with a sweat-dripping middle-aged man who was overly competitive in a foot wrestle, outmuscling me with gritted teeth while his temples pulsated.

Following this, there was a sprint to and from a distant tree, where you had to grab a leaf to prove you weren’t cheating before we were divided into groups of four. My plans to remain by my wife’s side were again thwarted and I found myself in a group with a man with a topknot and two women, one of whom had a blue bib on - a superior. By now, my hay fever was flaring up and my face was red and puffy, eyes streaming.

“So, is this your first class?” she asked.

“How did you guess?”

In one of the games, I had to put a bib in my shorts while the man and woman tried to prevent the woman in the blue bib from grabbing it - a bizarre activity, which ended in predictable humiliation. My defences were breached, she made a lunge, missed the bib and pulled my shorts down. Fully down. Ankles.

The class eventually finished, and I walked back to the car park near but not with the man who'd earlier destroyed me in the foot wrestle and the Tough Mudder. They were discussing their upcoming triathlon, an exchange which appeared to involve talking loudly about yourself without asking any questions whatsoever. I remained silent, rubbing my face with pollen-covered hands, and surreptitiously blowing my nose on my t-shirt. In the corner of my bloodshot eye, I could see Louise laughing with a group of women as though they’d been friends for years. Women are just better at this sort of thing, aren’t they?

“So, did you enjoy it, newbie?” The trainer asked me in the car park, leaning on his van.

Hay fever symptoms notwithstanding, I was surprised to realize I felt terrific. Exercise makes you feel better. Who knew?

“Yes.”

“Will you be back?” He asked.

“Where do we sign?”

They’ve got you, haven’t they?

The following week, with post-exercise endorphins long gone, Louise and I arrived in the car park in heavy drizzle, a few minutes late. The session had already started and people were frantically doing burpees while the trainer shouted.

“NO PAIN NO GAIN, ALLISON.”

Louise looked at me.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Yes. 100% yes.”

She turned the engine back on, looked straight ahead, and started driving. All the way home to our spotless carpets.

We have not returned to Military Fitness since.

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