I am pleased to announce that the Flanker family participated fully in this weekend’s Sport Relief, completing a mile event together on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
I say ‘together’ but it wasn’t quite. More on that later…
We arrived to witness the closing stages of the earlier 3 mile event, which left me feeling somewhat pathetic given that we had only opted for the one mile version. I needn’t have worried, however, as an overly energetic pre-race warm up under the supervision of a ridiculously enthusiastic fitness instructor soon rid me of any guilt or complacency. Warm up? More like 15 minutes of high impact aerobics. Thank you very much.
The family ‘plan’ had been to jog around together serenely (at least that's what I’d hoped). The Flanker family being a touch competitive in nature, however, soon put paid to that idea. From the klaxon off shot young Master F (9) like a greyhound from the traps, hotly pursued by his overweight bulldog of a father. For 300 yards or so the bulldog was just about in contention but, with young Master F showing no signs of slowing down, I soon realised I would be requiring the services of the hovering St. John’s Ambulence volunteers if I didn’t slow down to my more familiar plod and before long I was being overtaken by young Miss F (10) and then by Mrs F and then by most of the rest of the field.
When I eventually plodded over the finishing line, a tad short of the world record, I was informed that Master F had managed to finish the race 5th, which he may have mentioned once or twice for the remainder of the day.
All in all good fun though, and the start of yet another fitness comeback campaign…
