I was doin' me usual constitutional this morning a bit late. Into the park trooped about 30 or so kids from the local school and once organised by their teechah started doing a run. These are early teenagers mind so one might expect full of surplus energy and bursting with enthusiasm to be out of classes… yes?
Oh dear
. To start with only a few of them could actually run; most were waddling around like penguins, arms all over the place. Some were shuffling forwards on the balls of their feet hardly putting a heel down. Practically all of them were out of breath within about fifty yards and had to stop for breath, wheezing, body bent over as if they'd completed a marathon. Some of the gerlies carried the ubiquitous water bottle and were rehydrating after twenty seconds of movement.
Another youngish gent was walking the same way as me and we passed a comment or two. Like me he couldn't believe what he was seeing. What are they going to be like when they're older if this is their level of fitness now? I thought back to my schooldays when we used to do about an hour's cross country every week throughout the winter, that's an hour with barely a stop across fields, streams, through the woods, up and downhill. The only way out of it was if you were physically disabled or sick - and no water bottles either - even Fatty Arbuckle made it!
I suppose the upside is that when half of them turn to a life of crime they won't be able to run for it.
