Ancient Feet: 3 – Assessing Fitness
...Don was a different matter. He is one of those people who is always coming up with some sort of madcap project that he cannot find anyone to undertake with him (well, who would want to do the Pennine Way by camel?)...
Alan Nolan tries to assess the endurance levels of his four companions as they head north to begin their attempt to walk the breadth of England.
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As the minibus made its way up the M6,1 tried to assess the fitness levels of my colleagues, wondering whether we ¦were capable of achieving our ambition to walk the breadth of England.
Although Tom had done it nine times before, he was now sixty-nine and, over the last year or two, had not been walking as frequently as in his younger days and had begun to have problems with his knees, so he could well struggle, I thought. Joe was a bit of a mystery. I had not met him before and all I knew was that he was a friend of Andy's and that he had been on a couple of expeditions with Andy, Paul and Tom in the last two years. As Paul and Andy are both strong walkers, I assumed he would be as fit as them, although I was surprised to see that he looked older than I had anticipated.
Andy was the baby of the group at just fifty-one and I had assumed that Joe would be a similar age but, physically, he looked nearer Tom's age and did not give the impression of a man capable of completing a marathon walk across the country.
I had been amazed to learn that Paul was now sixty-one as I had always assumed he was younger than me, but he looked so fit that I had little doubt that he would have no trouble with twelve days walking, and he would have Andy to keep pace with him.
Don was a different matter. He is one of those people who is always coming up with some sort of madcap project that he cannot find anyone to undertake with him (well, who would want to do the Pennine Way by camel?). As a result, he never gets to fulfil his heroic adventures and I wondered ¦what sort of shape he was in. I knew he had been travelling to America and Hong Kong on a regular basis in connection with -work and would not have had much time for training and, after all, he was now sixty-two.
