So last night, after a series of unfortunate events, I ended up taking a big step, via the medium of being shoved. Yes, I became a man. But how did this happen? Read on, gentle reader…

After a hard day’s working, I was really looking forward to my British Military Fitness session. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been keeping an eye on the clock, and suddenly, I was late. I pulled on my jogging bottoms, that were slightly damp. This, I suddenly remembered, was because I’d forgotten to hang them up after taking them out of the washing machine.

Still, there was nothing I could do about it, so I squelched off down the road to Peckham Rye park. Arriving slightly late, I found no other BMF‘ers, just Rich the Park Manager throwing the vest bins into the van. “Hurry up,” he said. “You can still catch ‘em.” I grabbed a blue beginners vest. “Oh,” he said. “You might get a bit of a surprise out there…”

I legged it onto the grass and ran to catch up with the others. Immediately I was seeing red. Not because my soggy bottoms were chaffing (although they were), but because there were no blues out on the field. I was, it seemed the only beginner that had turned up. So I did the only thing I could do – and joined the harder Red group.

At first, it didn’t really seem that much tougher, a few games of British Bulldog here, a bit of a jog there. Of course, that was just the warm up. Once we got going, we were doing more reps, working harder, for longer, and with no knees on the floor. No knees on the floor! This was during the press-up of course. Knees on the floor while running would be equally objectionable.

We bounced up and down the park, tagging benches, running our guts out and, at one point, almost performing one-handed push ups. Our instructor, Carl repeatedly made sure it wasn’t too much for me, but in all honesty, I felt alright. Knackered, but alright. I even managed to come first on some of the runs. As we finished, Carl touched me on the shoulder and said “wear a red bib from now on, yes?”

I felt chuffed. And I walked away from the session feeling quite pleased with myself. Which lasted the entire distance to the bus stop, where I realised I’d forgotten to put any money on my Oyster card, meaning I had to walk home smelling a bit damp. Ever that didn’t dent my mood much though – the 363 bus that ploughed into a huge puddle by the road 10 minutes later, soaking me from head to foot managed to really put a ding in it though.

Anyway, from now on, I’m going to try moving up to the red group. It’s going to be tough, and in many ways, it’ll be like starting again. But I’m hoping it’ll at least have me really pushing myself once more, which is what I need I think. Let’s see how the next session goes…