Spartans

I must be getting fit (at last).

Set out to The Fence, a 7-7.5-mile out and back mainly on an undulating trail. My aim was to repeat a stonking run I had last week when, fired up after watching a clip of the "Spartans" training for the movie "300", I'd elected to sprint all the hills.

So off I went...only I couldn't find the hills. They seem to have been magically transformed into benign little slopes. Hmm... this may have something to do with the tasty muscle-endurance workout Bobby put me and Kyle through on Tuesday. One of the hardest sessions I have ever done. (Gory details on the Sub-5 forum). In comparison to that, I guess a lot of things are going to seem easy.

Having just seen "300", the comic-book style film about the Spartans' stand at the battle of Thermopylae, it seemed almost too much of a coincidence to come across a study about the benefits of being a "manly man".

The Spartans were the original inspiration for the famous Monty Python depiction of the armless, legless knight screaming "I've had worse... come back and fight!" It's a character trait we are all familiar with as runners. Athletes of both genders have taken a lot of stick from experts who've asserted that the "suck it up and suffer" routine puts us at a disadvantage when it we're injured.