There is a lot of pressure on this blog….
In fact, most of Saturday afternoon, all I heard was,
Imagine the blog…
The blog is going to be funny as….
Bet that gets on the blog.
So, pressure….
To be fair, the afternoon was probably one of the funniest I have experienced in a long time, but whether I can emulate that in the written form remains to be seen.
It was Day Three of my birthday celebrations. Day One involving a workout dressed as George from Rainbow and Bananaman…
Day Two was the Mad Blog Awards which I claimed as my party. Day Three was my outing….
Like so many things in my life this year it involved a wetsuit, and a lake, and a series of blow up obstacles….
I have discovered, in the last 18 months, an amazing group of women who seem to be quite happy to join me in doing stupid shit.
Which is how, after asking a few months back on a warm Summers Day (you remember, that one we had) I managed to get nine friends to agree to come jump into an ice-cold lake to spend the afternoon jumping around on massive inflatables to celebrating my 38th year of being…
Simply. The. Most. Fun. Ever.
The fun started in the car with multiple packets of wine gums, a team chin hair plucking session (got to look your best on the water), and several navigation issues. CrossFitters don’t seem to make good Sat Navs.
Upon arrival, the wetsuit caused the usual traumas.
I was slightly put out when the boy who was in charge of sizing took one look at my birthday cake filled figure and handed me a male extra-large. The gusset started at my shoulders. It was like, he looked at me and saw Mr Blobby.
I insisted he changed the size, which he did with a teenage grunt, and then present me with a smaller female size that had the words medium large embolden across the chest.
I decided not to argue in case the next one he gave me was one that someone had previously weed in.
Plus describing my bosom as medium large is not an entirely inaccurate description.
The Lake
Finally, after safety briefings and more squeezing into buoyancy aids we were ready to hit the lake which looked both unforgiving and freezing.
Then the personalities of the group began to emerge.
The loudest and brashest of us (myself included) started to linger near the back. Hand any of these a bar loaded up with weights and watch them fly. Pop them near a lake in mid September and watch them start to panic.
Then our leader emerged.
Looking like catwoman in a wetsuit, firewoman, SuperSteph stepped forward. Each confident stride taking her closer to the dark pond that was to be our fate. With a nod to her team, she jumped into the water with an elegance that surprised us all, and then emerged like a beauty, tossing her hair behind her and letting us know it was safe to join.
Then following her lead, we all plopped into the lake after her like little baby elephants.
And holy, jesus, mother of the lord – it was epically cold.
Like showering in ice cubes cold.
SuperSteph didn’t let us down. Pulling her tiny frame onto the nearest bit of luminous inflatable, she reached into the cold, dank, water and hauled out eight spluttering Crossfitters one by one.
We were alive, and on an island of blow up slides and see saws.
It was time to play.
SuperSteph showed us how to mount the obstacles…
Imagine a whale, belly flopping, and you have got an idea of the technique needed to navigate the course.
It did not take long for the uncoordinated and unbalanced to make themselves known.
I fell into this category of the coordinatally challenged and spent more time plunging into the icy depths than flopping like a whale over obstacles.
But I had company in the lake, and I’m not talking about the fishes.
We ran on rubber, swung like planks, squatted and spun and literally laughed till we weed (thermal heating in a wetsuit).
But like most things in life, when the experience is so good, and so much fun, I could never find the words to properly write it all down. What made the day, was not the cold lake, nor the giant jump, not even the sloped run that ended in disaster every time for me. Despite my proclaimations to the opposite.
What made it so fabulous, was the women who came with me, who helped me out of the lake everytime I almost drowned, who laughed with me, who stayed to the end even when their ankles were bleeding and toes had turned a curious blue colour.
At one point, I sat shivering on a slope, belly aching from laughing and my arms distraught from hauling my form out of the lake repeatedly. And I saw my amazing friends, shivering, laughing, soaking, and still smiling.
I have the best friends…..
Even if they do laugh at me when I fall down hills with hot chocolate in my hand.
Apparantly it is trampolining next……