By 
Those of you who survived last week’s column are probably tip-toeing through this opening line – one eye half shut, the other completely closed – praying the name of a certain croaky old iconoclast doesn’t appear again.
“Please God,” you’re thinking as you feel your way from one word to the next.
“There were three whole columns in last week’s Herald blowing smoke up Bob Dylan’s proverbial backside. If not for the sake of my sanity, then simply for the colonic health of a decrepit old rockstar, no more concert reviews!”
So fine. Have it your way. Instead of the Rolling Stone-esque dissection hinted at last week, I’ll have to come up with something else.
Ah yes. I’ll tell you about an act of tactical self-flagellation I subjected myself to on Sunday in a desperate attempt to motivate myself not to take the total mick again this festive season – an annual tradition that reliably leaves me a hollowed-out husk of a man come January.
While nursing a hangover from the first of a dangerously dense schedule of seasonal outings, I attended a Hyrox and watched local people – some at the peak of their powers, others simply putting in a serious shift – push, pull, run, leap and, in one man’s case, vomit their way through an assault-course-come-endurance-event that has gone from fitness fad to holy grail of functional fitness.
Here’s how my being there came about.
’Twas the morning after the night before and I awoke feeling like an overcooked scrambled egg: Pale, desiccated, and ready for the bin.
To crack open my eyes was like lifting the seized gates of some lost city, and inside me a fear was beginning to bubble.
Then it spoke: “If this is how you feel after one session, imagine the body-bruising, soul-denting, liver-lacerating, probably life-shortening effects the next eight are going to have on ye.”
I recoiled, then reached for my phone.
Niamh had text: “Ruairi (her brother) is doing the Hyrox today. If you wanna come watch one, this is your chance.”
My body spasmed and I threw the phone to the bottom of the bed as words like health, fitness and exercise went off in my mind like hand grenades.
I lay there staring at the ceiling, blinking the paradoxically slow but lightning-fast blinks of a reptile.
But after a few minutes suppine and catatonic, I began to feel like a kettle going off the boil.
“Maybe this is an opportunity,” I said to myself. “The shape I’m in, watching a Hyrox could be like exposure therapy.”
Then came the voice again: “That which he seeks most is to be found where he least wants to look.”
Ten minutes later I was pushing through a crowd of fresh-faced athletes and spectators in Dromore Sports Complex. Or, as its known to the peope who actually frequent it, The Sports Hall.
As I squeezed through the healthy hordes, the smell of coffee, deep heat and new ankle-length puffer jackets made me nauseous. Thankfully though, I managed not to boke.
Had I done so, I doubt I would have got the same treatment received by the pukey competitors, all of whom, upon ejection, were immediately swarmed by a choir of hi-vis-wearing, blue roll-carryng angels.
Looking down from the balcony I watched as men pulled sleds like reindeer, rowed through imaginary oceans and fired heavy balls into the sky like gods of the ancient world.
I was impressed. I was ashamed. I was jealous. And I was motivated.
“Right,” I announced. “I’m doing one of these by hook or by crook. More running and a few fresh weekends and I’ll be ready.”
Nobody took me on, but I meant it. Then my pocket buzzed.
It was my brother: “Finn (his girlfriend) is doing the Hyrox in Dromore here in an hour. Fancy coming up to watch?”
And so began the process again: The watching, the wincing, the marvelling, the imagining.
By the end of the day I’d watched three hours of people pushing themselves to their limits, yet somehow was left feeling like nobody had endured more than me.
As I limped out the door, I half expected someone to hang a medal around my neck and tell me I was the real winner.
They didn’t. So I went home and told everyone that next time it’d be me out on the course and somebody else hanging, both literally and figuratively, over the balcony watching.
