What’s particularly annoying is that I’m not someone who ever falls over. I actually go out of my way to not fall over because – from what I remember – it hurts and can crack things.
60 seconds later I was back from the ‘light jog’ and bent over like girl who’d been punched in the stomach by Hercules. Sand is a dreadful idea when it comes to fitness. As someone who regularly jumps off four foot high ramps I can tell you that adding sand to the mix is never a good idea. How could I be this knackered? All I’d done was jog to a flag and back. Some of the (admittedly younger) group hardly looked like they’d taken a breath. Maybe they hadn’t bothered with the ‘light jog’ at all. Maybe the lazy sods had just stood there all young and lithe, watching us old fuckers trip across the sand like a herd of pissed camels in high heels. I could only conclude that I had just been unlucky in finding some particularly unforgiving sand; I moved closer to the sea where the sand looked less yielding.
Tito announced: “We’re going to do five one-minute rounds”. HA HA HA I laughed out loud, thinking he was jokingly pretending that we were all going to fight each other and would now break into a smile saying “of course not!” He wasn’t and he didn’t; he just meant we were going to do five one-minute rounds of exercise. Never mind; at least I’d identified myself as the weirdo who laughs when nothing funny has been said (I find it’s important to set out your stand early at these things).
First up were step-lunges, followed by sprinting, followed by push ups, followed by burpees, followed by sit-ups. No worries; let me at ‘em!
“On your feet you filthy maggot!” I heard Tito shout (actually he just said “Up you get” rather politely (which was somehow worse)). “You can do this!” he called out incorrectly, and off I dragged like some poor atrophied squid. Because of my face-plant, just as I got vaguely going all the kids with normal functioning legs were turning around for the return run. How they must have pitied what they saw shuffling across the sand. If you know the bit in the original Robocop when the ginger lad goes into the toxic tank and lurches back out to be killed by a car – that’s me that is.
I did make it back to the starting line, but knew I was done; exercise routines are really best undertaken with working legs and to do so without a reliable, functioning mode of transportation is just asking for trouble. It’s simple math(s).
I decided the best course of action was to pretend that I never meant to do the whole thing (obviously, snort!) and had really just turned up to support the event and make the photos look more populated. But there were some similarly aged people nearby, and they knew.
I drank some water, tried not to throw up for a while, and then sat back watching the young people enjoying themselves with the professional sportsman. We all went for a swim afterwards which was nice (the buoyancy of the water meant I could appear fully-functioning once someone had carried me into the sea).
I walked back to my room once my legs had returned to operational status, thinking that perhaps next time I’d just pretend to have left my trainers at home (I might even start leaving them behind to avoid temptation).
In my absent mindedness I’d taken the wrong route back to my room and was faced with turning around or jumping over a four foot wall. I looked at my legs, and they looked back. We all turned around.