Planking there with my face in the long grass early on a Friday morning, hearing the seagulls, wind and waves around me, I felt quite emotional, and it wasn’t just from the physical exertion of holding myself rigid face down on my toes and elbows.
“Knees Up, Arses Down!”
It hurt already, and we’d only just begun.
I was part of a group of about 70 people led by my coach, Paul Mort, taking part in a physical challenge he had organised with his ex-special forces friends (who set up a specialist clothing brand, Thrudark).
We had taken a brief pause early in our march to do some strength exercises close to the Royal Marines memorial in Worth Matravers.
The stone seats and table pay tribute to the members of the Corps who have been killed since 1945.
The inscription on it says “Rest awhile and reflect that we who are living can enjoy the beauty of the sea and countryside”
I’ve walked past that memorial several times in the past, but it felt very different being taken there by Anthony “Staz” Stazicker (if you watched “Who Dares Wins” on Channel 4 a couple of years ago you’ll recognise his name), who had served three years in the Royal Marines and ten years in the SBS.
At that moment, I realised he wasn’t just a circus pony taking civilians on an Instragrammable jolly.
He was serious about making this day meaningful for us.
He encouraged us to give the day everything we had, and put in more effort than we thought we were capable of.
Staz explained how part of the route we were going on was known as The Rollercoaster in the SBS selection process.
As I watched the sweat drip from my chin onto my hands, I felt a wave of gratitude for the life I was able to live, and it hit me that what initially felt like a bit of fun to me was part of a training process that meant the difference between life and death for others.
I decided there and then that I wasn’t going to get my phone out and take photos along the way like I usually do when I’m walking in the area.
I was going to go all in and do the very best I could.
One of the biggest illusions I had busted that day was that a military march was a simply fast walk.
It wasn’t.
Staz said we were going to do it the way he was trained to do it: we could walk up and down the steep hills, but we were to run along the flatter paths.
I felt grateful for the running I’d done in the past three months training for my first half marathon, but it felt very different doing it with a rucksack full of water, food, clothes, spare trainers and a towel.
I was red-faced and huffing hard even though my load was nothing compared to what you’d carry in the military!
The group spread out quickly, with Staz taking the super-fit up ahead, leaving the rest of us to get to the next stop as fast as we could.
When we arrived at the stops, which happened every few kilometres, we had to do a gruelling mix of planks, press ups, squats and hill sprints with our rucksacks on, and sit ups with them off, then trotted off again as best we could with jelly legs.
On one of the stops, Staz challenged the fittest members of the group to a hill sprint race against him.
I watched in awe as he left some seriously fit people in his wake.
What was noticeable about his style is his core strength - he ran with rock solid posture on the uneven, steep terrain, his legs pumping like pistons.
He came back down the hill laughing like only someone who eats fit-pros for breakfast could!
We finished the 10 mile march on Swanage beach, with more exercises on the beach, including commando crawls on the sand (way more fecking exhausting than it looks!) and sitting in a row linking arms where the sand meets the sea and lying down, letting the waves break over our heads.
“Get your heads back down!” he yelled, as the reflex was to pull up off the sand when the water hit your face.
We were then told to make two lines, one behind the other, and I thought we’d be doing some kind of two-man sea-sprint relay.
I was in the front row.
He said. “Right! Front row - you’ll be carrying the man behind you on your back into the sea. GO!”
WTF?
I looked behind me and saw the guy I was to carry on my back wasn’t too huge, but I still wasn't sure if I was going to be able to walk with him on my back at all, let alone across sand into the water, but I gave it a go and surprised myself.
I dropped the poor sod when I hit a stony bit under the water, but I felt great that I was able to walk with him on my back on the sand at all.
I had achieved what I’d set out to do by the Royal Marines memorial that morning, and that was to give everything I had.
In the final few minutes of the day, Staz got us all to walk into the water and link arms in a horseshoe shape. He stood in the middle of us all, and got us to lower ourselves into the sea up to our necks and asked us to keep very quiet.
I can’t remember his exact words, but he said something along the lines of we had challenged ourselves physically, and now it was time to challenge our minds.
He encouraged us to think about the sort of people we wanted to be, and what was coming next in our lives.
Bobbing about there in silence with 70 other people who had all just given their all that day, was an emotional experience.
I’m not sure if it was because we were punch-drunk from the physical onslaught we’d experienced that day but there was something about Staz’s leadership we were all touched by that day, not least because it rang in complete harmony with the tone of Paul’s coaching which we were already tuned into.
I felt very inspired by both of them to keep showing up and making a difference to people’s lives.