Then you put the boot in…

So Team Sticky Bandits are now just four weeks away from our 10K Marine Commando Challenge. We have booked a hotel, which was so much of a bargain I still worry that I might have done it wrong and we have now started getting our kit together. From the off we said we wanted to have team t-shirts printed up, which we are in the process of doing but last weekend, we concentrated on our boots.

The website suggests that you go to an army surplus store and get a good pair of boots with noble ankle support and then take the time to break them in effectively before the run. We should just have enough time to get that done based on our recent shopping exploits. We met (eventually) at the Army & Navy store in Southend and were guided through our options by a man I imagine to be a fan of both nuclear warfare and Warhammer. He showed us their UK Army Assault boots which are the actual boots worn by the actual army. Not only are they the actual boots worn by the actual army but the actual boots they had for sale were the actual boots worn by the army, as in, the army had worn the available boots. They were recycled, they were second-hand, they were the boots of babykillers. We were enthralled.

‘So where have these boots come from’ asked Luke, trying to find out if they had been in the shit as it were. The guy refused to give us a straight answer and our minds ran away from us. Luke and I each goth a pair and I made quite the parade of marching up and down the shop. They put a spring in my step and elevated me a couple of vital inches above my usual six foot. As the guy declared Luke’s new booties to be slightly more scuffed than mine, he got them at a discounted price. On the drive back, Luke sat riding bitch and goaded me about his new boots, claiming they had been in ‘Nam and that he had found a tooth stuck in the tread.

There are three of us training for the run together as a unit, although at the moment the unit is probably only centimetres.
Note: considering it’s seven in the morning and I have a hangover, that’s a really clever joke.
The third of our party Luke B, refused to buy actual army boots off the actual army and is in the process of getting a better deal elsewhere. As punishment, we tricked him into running 9k with us. You wonder how that’s possible. Well, he doesn’t use a run tracking app (like the brilliant one provided by Nike) so relied on us to tell him the distances we had covered. We lied and then took an extended route on the way back so what he thought was 5k was over 9. Luke and I then ran laps of the car park until we ticked over to the 10k mark.
We are getting there. We are almost ready to take on the world, just give us a chance to get matching camo trousers first.