The most satisfying journey is the one you take inwardly, apparently.
It’s for that reason – and a quest for mean and moody photo content that will finally make me more desirable – that I embarked on a HYROX challenge in Birmingham last weekend.
In the pantheon of sporting challenges, it’s hardly a marathon or an extreme triathlon conquest, but it was the first real gauge of my physical and mental fortitude – give or take a Sunday morning battering up the Wren’s Nest back in the day.
HYROX combines both running and functional workout stations, where you have to run 1km, followed by one functional workout station, repeated eight times through.
Elite athletes talk about being ‘in the zone’ in the heat of battle and I wanted to hear the sound of my own inner voice, which could only pipe up at an event like this.
After buying some feelings from a vending machine, I was kettled into a dark tunnel with a throbbing pack of behemoths as everything became real. Some with bulging muscles I literally couldn’t place; others with shorts resembling hot pants and incongruous pink socks. None of them were there for pleasantries.
Tranquillity was elusive in this dimly lit corridor in a foreboding first impression. A digital clock counting down from 60 seconds caught my eye along with a collage of mean and moody photos of past participants, faces contorted in pain. They didn’t look desirable to the opposite sex. An overly exuberant girl, presumably high on Red Bull, bellowed at us to get going!
And off I jogged, following the creatine cluster and taking one step at a time, just like my old counsellor used to tell me.
A ‘Talia’ and ‘Taryn’ tattoo-clad back bounded past me and I stopped myself from telling the Adonis that his children would be proud. His ‘beast mode’ was on and who’s to say that Talia and Taryn weren’t past lovers? Or posthumous pets?
How would my strength stand up to sled pushes, sandbag lunges and other exercises dreamt up by Beelzebub, I wondered? If I punched Tattoo-clad Back Man flush on the chin, would his legs wobble?
Better to think more positively, which I would have done if I’d have been allowed my headphones.
Bronski Beat kept me company during training and I missed them. I passed the time by picturing other competitors listening to my playlist of Erasure, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and co.
Like the challenge that was unfolding before me, I was certain they wouldn’t have been amused, which I thought to be a tad ironic, given their get-up.
‘But the answers you seek will never be found at home; The love that you need will never be found at home.’
Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away…
…And I kept on running until I hit the Burpee Broad Jump station, when things finally ground to a halt.
It all got a bit much in a moment of discomfort that was too unsettling for words. Eighty metres of purgatory ripped away my soul and pride simultaneously, as I feared what on earth my son must be thinking as he looked on from afar.
As I jumped and stooped to lie horizontal on the floor, I wondered what else I could be doing while I was down there.
My boy’s furrowed brow told a story of mingled panic and horror as I briefly thought my world was ending beneath the strobe lights of the NEC. When I opened my eyes, I wanted to see a glow from the gates of heaven instead, and a lilting angel in Gymshark leggings beckoning me through. She squawked over the PA system instead: “You’ve got this!”
Cramp? Heart attack? Mid-life crisis?
‘Lucozade’, I stammered to Arthur and he fumbled for a bottle in his bag, as fast as he could. I didn’t want him to see his Dad like this. This wasn’t how it was meant to be. Pillars of strength shouldn’t look like this. I wanted to tell him that I loved him with all my heart, and that I’m sorry for ever letting him down during the dog days, but I couldn’t catch my breath.
I slowly made tracks, and felt my stupidly expensive trainers come loose from all the exertion, which I only bought a day or two before to combat the onset of ‘fat pad syndrome.’ Bad move. I yanked the drawstring too tight, only to stumble over the wire loop which snapped in two.
My mind then turned to a Radiohead song that would otherwise be playing through my Spotify, if only some sadistic bastard hadn’t banned us from listening.
‘Phew, for a minute there I lost myself.’
And I was back again, grimly making progress with one laceless trainer squeaking me towards the final station.
I saw Arthur in my peripheral version and I told myself to throw a 6kg ball 100 times as if it was his bag of worry. I threw it, caught it and tossed it over my head some more, crashing it against a backboard like a beaten enemy. I heard him shout out at me from afar.
The finishing line then came and went like cramp.
I crossed a raised ramp and was handed a rectangular piece of felt, as if it was an afterthought.
It makes more sense now than it did at the time.
‘Hyrox Birmingham. Finisher.’
