Twenty minutes later, we’ve been fully briefed by Sonja, who is host-presenting the weekend. The salient points are that we very much have to do this as a pair. And we’re up against a clock and against the other couples who are here. The other couples all paid a tenner to enter an apparently very popular competition to join the weekend. Bizarre what people will do in the name of getting a near-freebie. I’m not sure how many people wouldotherwise sign up in pairs to a weekend comprising an assault course, a getting-to-know reptiles session, followed by a fondue dinner, and then a treetop rope walk tomorrow. Although, saying that, I’ll be quite happy with all those things.
The team who come last have to do ice baths.
‘I am not fucking doing an ice bath,’ Freya says. ‘We are fucking beating the others. And if that means you have to carry me, then you’re carrying me.’ This weekend is making her very sweary.
‘Noted,’ I say. Good job she isn’t very big. Good job formethat I quite like an ice bath, so I don’t really care whether we win or lose.
‘Ready?’ roars the man who briefed us.
We all nod, some more happily than others. And we’re off.
13
FREYA
It’s so muddy. So bloody muddy. That rhymes. Bloody and muddy.
Bloody muddy.
My goodness. I think I’m losing my mind.
This is awful, though. So much mud. It’s such hard work running through it.
I really, really, really don’t want to do an ice bath.
So I’m somehow going to have to do this course faster than all these super-fit-looking people.
My lungs are on fire. It feels like my head is too. I really can’t think.
‘Are you okay?’ Jake asks me, talking really easily, like he’s just out for a stroll around the park, instead of doing the hardest physical challenge I’ve ever tried.
I can’t talk. I can’t even shake my head. I just keep on lugging my booted feet through the quagmire below us. I hate, hate, hate, hate,haterunning.
Eventually, we come to the end of the hideous running bit, thank fuck. We’ve reached one of those net things you see on TVand we have to crawl under it. Sosomuch better than running. A genuine little break.
The other teams are all already under the net, because they all ran faster than I did. It looks quite hard – some of them are getting quite stuck – but it lookswayless bad than the running was.
‘It’s very muddy.’ Jake speaks very apologetically. He’s been fairly apologetic all morning (when he hasn’t been laughing) after he realised what an idiot he’s been since the moment we met. Apologies are absolutely no good whatsoever to me now, though.
‘Don’t care,’ I pant. ‘Rest from running.’
‘Okay. I’m going to go slightly ahead of you and I’m going to hold the net up so all you have to do is crawl as fast as you can?’ he says. ‘How does that sound?’
Well, it kind of sounds patronising. But it also soundsexcellent.
‘Perfect,’ I manage to say.
And oh my goodness I’m delighted to say that I am pretty good at crawling through mud. It’ssomuch better than running.
Andunbelievably, when we get out at the other end, it turns out that out of all the six teams we’refirst, because at least one of every other pair has got tangled in the net.
‘No time to gloat,’ Jake yells. ‘Run.’
Fucking running. I really, really, really fucking hate it.
This run is a relatively short one, though, thank goodness.
However.
