Fitness

Life is riddled with things that impersonate something in a hideously disappointing way: the regret of Pepsi, the affront of the rail replacement bus and, for runners, the tedium of the treadmill.  They are one of the most tiresome inventions to scar this planet, offering a mind-numbing bastardisation of one of life’s joys. I’m a long-distance runner and I can run blissfully in the open air for hours on end but, on a treadmill, I want to give up after less than a minute. Running in the great outdoors is a blessed experience. The air is fresh and cooling, the scenery keeps changing and nature is all around you. The birds are singing and the time passes in that dreamy, accidental way – like when you’re deep in a brilliant conversation. It’s glorious.

The first finisher crossed the line sweaty, tired and almost black with dirt, his white Decathlon shirt turned gray and his standard-issue blue gloves transformed into a deep midnight. He dragged behind him a refrigerator-sized plywood box, piled high with swollen rubbish bags and secured with a hooked rubber bungee cable — where he grabbed that, nobody knew. Yet José Luis Sañudo Lamela’s smile was wide, and he laughed heartily when onlookers and fans expressed amazement at his feat. But despite Lamela’s assuredness that he would take home top billing in the annual World Plogging Championships, one man outdid him — if not in diversity of goods, in pure heft.

Over dinner with a friend last week, halfway through a bottle of Merlot, I noticed her eyes starting to glaze over as I spoke. Normally, I’d be offended – but it’s something I’ve experienced a lot lately, and I’ve only got myself to blame.  I was in the middle of telling her a story about my latest running route, which is a slightly different version of a run I’ve been doing for years – down the country lanes near my house, but rather than cutting through the footpath in front of the fields, now I take a sharp left and go round the farm, doubling back behind the houses and adding at least six miles… sorry, were you starting to nod off?  It’s official: I have become a marathon bore.

The hashtag 'gym creep' now has more than 37.3 million views on TikTok. Honestly, I’ve watched hundreds of these videos and the only weird behaviour I can spot in any of the clips is from the women recording the unsuspecting men while they work out. 'Watch this creep,' the lady will say as a confused male just happens to glance at the camera that’s been shoved in front of him. Scandalous! Gina Love is one of these women. The TikTokker, whose feed mainly consists of her trying on different shades of lipgloss, went viral after posting a video of her doing deadlifts, supposedly catching out one of these so-called #gymcreeps. 'Watch this creep come over to my personal bubble while doing Romanian deadlifts,' Love wrote.

“Wire your booze cabinet up to the mains so you can’t get into it!” says Jason Fox, the former Royal Marine Commando and Special Forces Sergeant who’s best known for barking orders on Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins. With wine o’clock starting earlier each day for many of us, as we crawl the walls in isolation, I’ve asked Jason for his take on lockdown drinking. “It’s not the answer really. It’s great fun and I enjoy having a drink, but I won’t allow myself to drink all day. It doesn’t make you feel better about yourself.