Getting Sweaty and Dirty Outdoors . . . All in the Name of Fitness Torcuil Crichton On Obesity

Summary

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BACK to the park, in the darkness, to the mud and the autumn chill. Back to doing sit-ups, star jumps and squat thrusts in a masochistic effort to roll back the years, to fit into a suit tailored a decade ago, to live three years longer than I would have in my chain-smoking days.

The gym was never for me, and having swapped weekend access to the Scottish mountains for proximity to, er, shopping at Selfridges I sometimes feel the absurd need to get sweaty and dirty in an outdoor location. (Insert your own puerile joke here, I can't be fussed. ) So I'm back to boot camp, a kind of outdoor circuit training run by army physical training experts who do a line in mild encouragement rather than barking like scrapyard alsatians. Years ago, I used to go to one of these classes in Hyde Park very early in the morning (what was I on? ) but I've found the advantage of evening sessions is that you can't make out what you're sitting on in the damp grass. Muscles aching, all I can look forward to is hobbling home, hoping that a passing ambulance will take sympathy.

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Extract

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Getting Sweaty and Dirty Outdoors . . . All in the Name of Fitness Torcuil Crichton On Obesity

Leastways, if an ambulance does pick me up it won't have to be one of the fleet of "fat" bariatric ambulances that London health chiefs are planning to buy. Concerned that their regular vehicles are not strong enough to carry ...

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