First Session!

Well, WOW. I was too tired to type this last night (and also my legs were on fire from all the running), but now I'm awake and aching slightly less, here goes...

So of course I went along, and nervously walked up to some of the tallest soldiers I've ever seen. They were nice enough, took my medical form and gave me a blue bib. I then peed (I swear I went before I left) and went and loitered awkwardly for a bit - turns out most people go in pairs to this thing, but that doesn't bother me.

A bit more loitering was had, and then we got going.

And when I say 'we got going', I mean it went from loitering by the van to running. We didn't run too much really, we did our exercises in different parts of the park, but we jogged to them. I've not got alot of stamina -- having 12 stone to haul around on a 5 foot frame doesn't help either. However, I mostly kept up and only walked near the tail end of where we were jogging to, so I considered it an achievement and I just know that as I go on, that'll improve (let's face it: if it doesn't, something's wrong).

So in each spot we did everything from press ups to something called burpees (where you go from squats to jumping, really difficult), and we also did some team exercises, sit ups, squats and sprinting back and forth short distances. It was really fun. They even made a game where we had to pass a cone over our heads and under our legs to the person behind, with a forfeit if anyone dropped it.

The only thing that got me, as I say, was the running. The rest was tiring but in a good way.

We did have a tiny bit of a drama right near the end. A woman who goes there once a week (I think it was her 6th week or so) fell over and said she 'heard something snap', and was in agony. Paul, the instructor, piggy-backed her down to the van where they took a look at her. I think her friend drove her to the hospital, because she was gone and no ambulance was called. Hopefully she's not broken it, but she may have fractured it or torn a ligament or something. Shame, really.

It's definitely the kind of thing that you have to mentally psyche yourself up for, especially at the beginning. My next session will be Saturday morning and then next week I'll be going Thursday and Sunday. The reason for this is that my Wednesday session was at 7:30pm (the other one, at 6pm, is just too early due to work), but the Thursday session is at 6:30pm, which is doable.

So here's looking forward to Saturday! Wish me luck and minimal aching!