Reign of Terror? You can’t scare me...

Iam all for fat shaming. I do it to myself most mornings when I get out of the shower. Because I am fairly active, and I don’t go mad on sweet things, the reflection is not too bad. It is that eternal half stone, in old money, that separates me from perfection. Or so I thought.

My designated driver thought different. Often I am the designated driver and there is no worse job than listening to people get louder and talk more rubbish and then have to drive one of them home.

It was after such a lunch that I was being driven back through Kells village outside Kilkenny when my sober driver was heard to say “You should do that. It would do you good.”

“Do what,” I inquired fearing the worst. She pointed at a huge poster advertising the Reign of Terror, an Endurance and Obstacle course happening in October... 5k or 10k...

“Don’t tell me you couldn’t do that,” came the sober taunt.

By now I was regretting insisting on staying for ‘just one more’ glass of red. Nothing comes without a cost.

I replied that I was happy enough doing my regular runs and thought that would be the end of it.

“And what regular runs would they be? I haven’t seen you on the road all summer.” I lied about going out early in the summer mornings and reminded her that I once did the Dublin City Marathon so a 5K obstacle course (forget 10K) would be a piece of cake.

“In 2000. Seventeen years ago. Am I right?”

She was. The next morning I got out of the shower and thought maybe I was going to seed a little. I stepped on the scales.

To my horror I had acquired five pounds over the ice cream season. Maybe she had a point. It is still less than a belt notch, but things were going in the wrong direction.

There are few greater motivators than “I will show her”. I opened the Reign of Terror website and I don’t mean the one about Paris in 1793. I mean the one in Kells, Co Kilkenny, on October 21.

The homepage is a live countdown that certainly focuses the attention, or intention. This website does not hold back. There are muddy faces, plenty of water, monkey bars over, yes, mud pits, and cargo nets. The tyre squeeze is motivation enough to lose an inch or two and looked a touch claustrophobic.

You get a commemorative photo which I will proudly display. It is not clear if you have to finish to get that.

My eye did fall on the corporate section where you and your colleagues can eat pig on a spit and quaff the local Ger Costello’s fine beer.

But then I realised that a designated driver would be required and that was how I got into this mess in the first place.

See you there.