British Military Fitness

You would have thought I would have learnt by now wouldn’t you? When Elaine, my middle daughter, says ‘mum do you fancy doing this?’ seldom is the ‘this’ a nice meal and a bottle of wine. Still at least it wasn’t the Brighton Half Marathon or the Beachy Head Marathon. No this was only a training session with the Army in Moor Park where she concluded ‘they wouldn’t be horrible to you as they want you to come back’. I agreed to attend with her. After all, with her living down South, our time together is precious.

Come the Wednesday night I was seriously worried. Between Ruth Turner revealing her daughter ‘was sick the first two times she went’ and my work colleague Andrea offering to come and carry me out of the car in the morning ‘because there was no way I would be able to walk’. Apprehension was further increased by Elaine swearing me to secrecy on her Captain status as she had become unfit with working all the time and didn't want picking on

I worried for nothing. On arrival in Moor Park car park I was greeted by a friendly bunch of people who pointed us towards the instructors who were easy to spot in khaki. They talked us through our previously downloaded forms, explained the bib colours, strongly advised us to pick blue unless we were super fit and told us not to worry it was hard but nothing you couldn’t do.

Come 7pm we were lined up in the car park and there was a little bit of good humoured banter with a couple of people who had turned up late. We then split into two groups with an instructor for each group. We started off with a steady jog and a feeling that maybe I had opted for too easy a group.

After a few stretches there was more running, some team work and more running interspersed by sit ups, push ups and squat thrusts along with lots of encouragement from fellow members and instructors. I had picked the right group - I found muscles I had only read about in text books! We finished off nicely breathless, pretty muddy and with that smug feeling a good workout gives you.

Each session is 45 minutes long and, for me, the seller was the fact that it is outdoors no matter what the weather and, as yet, no class has been identical. With winter and its shorter days approaching I was desperate not to loose the good work Ruth and I have put in over the summer. With three classes a week I can meet in the dark and know I am safe with others and doing something different because as we all know our winter running routes get a bit monotonous.

A free taster session is available to all from www.britmilfit.com just follow the link. Try it. It may or may not be for you but you never know until you give it a go.

Written by: Sue Jones

Submitted: 30^th September 2010

Edited by: Brenda J Earnshaw WRR Editor