‘We still come if the rain’s sideways’ – how Britain fell in love with outdoor fitness

Parkrun, Devon

Sometimes the hardest thing about running is getting out the door, especially in the mornings. It’s so much easier to roll over and go back to sleep, or stick on some toast and promise yourself you’ll go another time. Knowing there are hundreds of other people waiting to run with you in your local park can be a big help.

‘There’s something about being in a group that seems to make running easier.’ Photograph: SWNS.com

Parkrun is a phenomenon. More than 1 million people in the UK have taken part in one at some point. Every Saturday at 9am, in 414 parks across the country, people of all ages, shapes and sizes run together over a three-mile course.

My nearest one is the aptly named Parke parkrun in Devon. I’ve been meaning to go for months. Finally, on Saturday, I took the plunge.

Adharanand Finn picks up a sweat. Photograph: SWNS.com

For beginners, joining a race or running with others can be intimidating. But parkrun is set up to cater for British awkwardness. While it’s all very welcoming, if you don’t want to talk to anyone, you don’t have to. The whole thing is a template for simple efficiency. Register online, print out a barcode (which you hand in at the end), and turn up in time for the start, where volunteers will explain the route and how everything works. It’s also completely free.

Parke parkrun is in a country park and, it being August, there are lots of holidaymakers joining it. It’s that much fun you’ll even want to do it when you’re on holiday.

I usually plough a lonely furrow around the lanes near my house on a Saturday morning, but now I’m suddenly in the excited throng, milling around, limbering up. Proper running. Once we start, everything passes in a mad blur as we dash off through the woods. There’s something about being in a group that seems to make running easier – the movement of the other runners, the sense of being carried along in this flow of bodies, of being part of the charge.

Be warned, though, you may end up running faster than you intended. I had planned to enjoy the run at a nice gentle pace but, halfway around, my competitiveness got the better of me and I started trying to pass as many people as possible. The organisers say, pointedly, that parkrun is a run, not a race, but I’m not listening. I’m Mo Farah, making my move up the field. In the end, I finish in 4th place – just outside the medals. Adharanand Finn

Nordic walking, Edinburgh

First things first: the weather is lovely. Rich, gold evening light, bone-dry grass, and – OK, you can’t have everything – a naughty August wind careering through the flat expanse of Edinburgh’s Inverleith park. Still, we’re talking about an outdoor fitness class in Scotland. The fact that the wind isn’t studding my face with a hundred tiny needles of rain makes it a resounding success before I have even strapped my poles to my hands.

Making strides … the beginners go Nordic in Inverleith park with her instructor Trevor. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

Ah, yes, the poles. I am Nordic walking, which is about as inoffensive as outdoor fitness gets. It looks a bit like cross-country skiing without the skis. But if you don’t like Nordic walking, you don’t like life. It is a wholesome, unintimidating, cheery activity – the kind I imagine allotment owners going in for – and it uses 46% more calories than normal walking and 90% of working muscles. Also, it’s Scandinavian, so it must be good.

One woman in our group – a four-week beginners’ course – is on crutches and is Nordic walking to strengthen her leg. In another weekly class at Portobello beach, two of the walkers are in their 80s. Most Nordic walkers are women. As for me, I have never done an outdoor fitness class in my life and I am usually the person walking their dog past the uptempo group doing star jumps on a Tuesday morning, pondering the point of all this hands-in-the-air bootcampery.

But, by the time we are striding across the park with our poles softly patting the ground in our wake, I am having a blast. Dogs come and sniff our pole tips when we stop for a quick debrief. The sun dips lower in the sky. There is birdsong, laughter, the warm glow of smugness that all exercise induces.

‘ It is a wholesome, unintimidating, cheery activity.’ Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

Trevor, Edinburgh’s only Nordic walking instructor, took it up four years ago and is an excellent advert for its benefits: kind, chipper, slim. He talks us through the technique, which is harder than it looks; I keep “spotty-dogging” (when your arms go out of synch with your legs and you look like a tool). No one minds. Nordic walking is about embracing your inner spotty dog. We head for a distant corner of the park and Nordic walk up and down a precipitous hill that I would never have otherwise attempted. Beside us, another group sprints up and down the verge. I suddenly become aware that Inverleith park – a typically genteel Edinburgh green space, with its painterly views of the castle, and pond used by model boat clubs – is teeming with outdoor fitness classes. Boot camps, football games, jogging groups, buggy runs; half of the city seems to be here.

In such an environment, it’s hardly surprising that no one finds our merry band of Nordic walkers annoying. Rather, people smile at us fondly as they might if we were a hi-vis group of nursery children holding hands. One elderly man on a bench shouts: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” as we stride past, then as an afterthought, “CAN I COME?” It’s all so very … nice. Chitra Ramaswamy

Project Awesome, London

As I complete 10 press ups on a stranger’s back, high-five several people I have only just met and crab-walk painfully up Primrose Hill for the sixth time, I glance at my watch. It’s 6.58am.

My aching muscles – most of which I didn’t know existed until now – are waving white flags and, somehow, I have a mouthful of dried mud and grass, yet it appears I have only been doing this for 28 minutes. Oh well, I think, only another 32 to go …

High-fives and press-ups make for a ‘fun, badass workout.’ Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

I’m here because of the success of Project Awesome, a collective of high-energy extroverts providing “free, fun, badass workouts in your city” (currently that means London, Bristol and Edinburgh). Their classes start at a time I am as likely to stay up until as get up for, and put a twist on your typical outdoor exercise class: along with all the running and burpees, there are frequent hugs, high-fives and, er, bum slaps. There’s also chanting, cake-eating and more hugs. Did I mention the hugs? There are a lot of hugs.

Things kick off with a minute’s litter picking (the hilltop is a mess of broken glass and lager cans at 6am) before the 50 or so attendees begin a running circuit that involves various touchy-feely exercises such as joint one-legged squats. If this all seems daunting for a newcomer, the Project Awesome team ensure that it is not – newbies are made to feel especially welcome right up until the end when I am forced inside the centre of a massive group – you guessed it – hug. You have to quickly get au fait with other people’s sweat: the smell, the feel, the taste.

Star power … Tim Jonze gets in the Project Awesome spirit. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

But it’s fun, even for people like me, who don’t particularly relish early starts, enforced extroversion or being required to slap strangers on the arse. The surreal atmosphere means that the workout is far less painful than it could be and several people tell me how they had previously been spending around £60 a month on outdoor exercise courses before they found Project Awesome (which promises it will never charge).

Yet, despite what seems to be an altruistic project that encourages friendship as much as fitness, Project Awesome is currently at the centre of controversy. Locals are up in arms that the “spiritual” atmosphere of Primrose Hill at 6am has been broken by chanting, Lycra-clad “hipsters” and have been trying to get the class shut down. One report said the situation had become so serious that Liam Gallagher had been forced to stop running there. Won’t anyone think of the poor Britpop frontmen?

It all seems pretty daft to me – the noise is minimal, local cafes get a boost (post-workout coffee is encouraged) and the place gets tidied up for free; surely the people leaving broken glass lying around would make better targets for ire? Besides, I wouldn’t fancy trying to repress the enthusiastic types behind Project Awesome. “See you next week!” my newly acquired exercise buddies shout as I head off. Little do they know that I don’t get out of bed before 9am for anything less than a Guardian byline. Still, I spend the next 12 hours feeling pumped up and high as a kite. Awesome, in fact. Tim Jonze

British Military Fitness, Brighton and Hove

The other writers on this page are going to say that their fitness classes were tough, but they will be wrong. This was tough. This one. The toughest I think I’ve ever done.

In British Military Fitness, there are no breaks at all. Photograph: Jill Mead for the Guardian

British Military Fitness (BMF) was one of the first outdoor fitness clubs, and is now one of the biggest. “Old-fashioned army physical training,” park manager Les told me to expect. “We still come if the rain’s sideways. But it’s not boot camp. We don’t bawl in people’s faces.” Lisa, Matt and Jason will be the instructors. All are current or ex-military. There are about 30 of us civilians, an even mix of men and women. David, 50, has been coming with his wife for two years to complete his weight-loss programme. Jilly, 36, likes being outdoors and hates gyms. “It’s all poncing around in there.”

We take numbered bibs from a bucket, coloured blue through red up to green to denote our fitness level. After years of football, I fancy myself a red, but there is only a blue 14 left. It turns out to suit me. We begin with a quick jog, followed by some team games passing heavy bags around and doing squat thrusts, sit-ups, press-ups, burpees (a kind of jumping squat thrust) and bastardos (I was tired by then, I forget). Afterwards, Matt takes the green group and the rest go with Jason and Lisa. We run uphill with the bags (“your injured mate”). We form ranks and teams and compete to do our squat thrusts and press-ups and so on faster than each other.

A real planker … Leo Benedictus is pushed to the limit. Photograph: Jill Mead for the Guardian

This is what I didn’t expect: there are literally no breaks at all. We never rest. Even while the rules of a new game are explained, we have to hold ourselves in the plank position, or do more squats or lunges or something. The reward for finishing each task is the next one. We are always behind, always struggling, always being kindly but loudly told to work harder, as we grunt through the weed smoke and bemused stares of passersby. I can stop if I feel I can’t go on. I’ve been told that. But it isn’t made easy. That’s why BMF is different: you find you’re more or less forced to do it.

Some of the compulsion comes from comradeship. Working in teams, or even in a pair, makes me want to find another press-up from somewhere, because my mate just did. The rest comes from friendly shouting and punishment, for losing or for doing the wrong thing. Shattered, when I put my hands on my hips to rest, Lisa makes the whole group do three burpees, “courtesy of number 14”. When David breaks another rule by telling me what I did wrong, we have to do three more. Sometimes the prize for winning is choosing the punishment for the losers. “We beast them,” Lisa chuckles afterwards, “but there’s always a bit of humour.” I think BMF is fantastic – now it’s over. I may well come back. Leo Benedictus

Our Parks, London

It’s somewhere in the middle of my second plank exercise that the trees stop helping to distract me. So far I have star-jumped until I was red in the face, done three rounds of sit-ups – twisting and turning like a fish on a line – and lunged across the black tarmac of the multiuse court for so long my thighs felt like they might burst into flame. Through it all, my teacher has been patient and gently encouraging. But it was the novelty of staring at the blue sky instead of a speckled ceiling tile or the horrors of a gym mirror that kept me going.

Limbering up … Homa Khaleeli with instructor Chantal. Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Guardian

Even when my aching abs got in the way of the bliss of being outdoors, there were diversions in the park – the children kicking a football, teenagers gossiping, someone smoking a spliff – to focus on rather than ticking away the seconds of the plank.

None of the other park users seem to mind me puffing and panting in the corner of the playing courts. This might be because the classes are free and open to everyone. Chantal, my instructor, is from Our Parks, an initiative that works with councils and development agencies to put on classes in open spaces around London. The company was set up by Born Barikor, a former athlete from a council estate in Tower Hamlets, who wanted to create a way for people on lower incomes to access exercise classes.

Currently there are 200 on offer through the company’s website – from yoga to boot camps – and the organisation is hoping to expand further afield. The one I have joined is in Alexandra Road park, a playground-heavy strip of beautiful green lawns and landscaped gardens in the middle of the brutalist Alexandra and Ainsworth estate in north London.

The fitness class helps people on the estate stay healthy. Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Guardian

Chantal explains that the residents’ association wanted a class to help the mothers on the estate stay healthy – and she usually has at least eight women attending. Children are welcome to play alongside their exercising parents and the ex-City worker shows me picture of her last session, with three babies along for the ride. But today, thanks to the 28C heat and school holidays, it is just me having what amounts to a personal training session.

During winter, she tells me, she has had a couple of sessions where the group has been snowed on. Some classes are moved indoors when it gets cold to avoid people giving up. As I gingerly get to my feet and feel my legs wobble below me, I have to admit I am hooked. I gave up the gym a few years ago when I realised that running outside made me much happier than staring at a screen indoors. But I have been looking for a strength class to kick me properly into shape – now I just have to find one that doesn’t involve the plank. Homa Khaleeli

‘We still come if the rain’s sideways’ – how Britain fell in love with outdoor fitness

Life expectancy in Syria fell by six years at start of civil war

Life expectancy in Syria fell by six years in the first three years of the civil war, according to a study showing that the health of populations in many countries that experienced uprisings or conflict during the Arab spring has suffered serious effects.

Between 2010 and 2013, average life expectancy dropped by approximately three months in Yemen, Tunisia and Egypt, according to research published in the Lancet global healthjournal. Libya experienced a steep drop in life expectancy after the 2011 uprising that deposed Muammar Gaddafi, but it rose after the initial conflict ended.

Worst affected was Syria, where men and women were expected to live to 75 and 80 respectively in 2010, but 69 and 75 by 2013. Infant deaths in the country rose by 9.1% over the same period, in stark contrast to the average 6% yearly decline in the decade to 2010, according to the study.

Ali Mokdad, professor of global health at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, Seattle, who led the research, said the situation was likely to have worsened since.

“The sad part is that we stop at 2013 and we know that the war has been raging in Syria [since], and there’s a war in Yemen and war in Libya right now as well,” he said. “People are dying from killing and bombing, but they’re also dying because they’re unable to get their blood pressure medicine, not able to get to hospital. Kids are not eating properly, getting anaemia – we need to stop this madness.”

The study authors warn that hard-won gains that have led to life expectancy in the eastern Mediterranean region as a whole increasing from 65 in 1990 to 71 in 2013 are under threat. In the same period, life expectancy in Libya, Syria and Yemen rose steadily by about three months per year.

Mokdad said the situation had been aggravated by a brain drain of doctors, who were often among the first to leave when conflict broke out even though their skills would be vital during war and beyond.

The report, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, warns that on top of the direct threat posed by conflict, millions of people in countries where uprisings took place in 2010 are faced with dire water shortages and poor sanitation, which can lead to outbreaks of disease. Frequent attacks on vaccination teams have slowed immunisation campaigns, and polio has again become a major concern – especially in refugee camps – at a time when the region was close to eradicating it.

Mokdad said: “We need a road map for building health infrastructure in these countries. All we do in immunisation is based on electricity for the fridges to keep medicines in, everything is based on roads, everything is based on safety, so drivers can deliver. All countries need to come together to fix this.”

Just under two years ago, the UN estimated that the death toll in Syria from the conflict was 250,000. But in February, the Syrian Centre for Policy Research said 470,000 people had died – about 400,000 directly owing to violence and 70,000 because of a lack of adequate health services.

Life expectancy in Syria fell by six years at start of civil war

"I fell asleep at the wheel": the dangers of doctors driving home

Steven Best was on his way home from work when he crashed and wrote off his car.

The GP, who at the time was a junior doctor working in obstetrics, had just finished his shift at 5pm after starting work at 9am the day before. He was in the fast lane of the dual carriageway when a car in the slow lane crossed into his line of vision and he hit it.

“I don’t remember falling asleep at the wheel but I’ve always thought I was pretty tired. I thought that might have played a part in it,” he says of the incident 32 years ago.

You might think this was an unlucky one-off but new research suggests the opposite. Two in five UK doctors (41%) have fallen asleep at the wheel while driving home after a night shift, according to an online survey of 1,135 doctors from Doctors.net.uk.

The survey respondents also said they knew, on average, six colleagues who had fallen asleep at the wheel. More than one in four knew a doctor who had died in a road traffic accident after a night shift.

One doctor who answered the survey said: “I lost two very good friends within weeks of each other … both had car accidents driving home after a night shift. One on the motorway with no one else involved – the inquest [revealed that she] fell asleep at the wheel … [They were] super people who had so much more to give and so much more life to live.”

The results come soon after the inquest of Dr Ronak Patel that found he fell asleep at the wheel when driving home after his third night shift in a row. Last week, Michael Farquhar, a paediatric consultant sleep specialist, told the British Medical journal that the NHS needs a sizeable culture shift in its attitude to doctors sleeping during night shifts.

Falling asleep while driving isn’t just an issue limited to doctors and there have been reports of nurses dying in road traffic accidents too. The nature of certain jobs in healthcare means that professionals’ working lives are made up of an ever-changing variety of night shifts, day shifts and rest days.

The issue is perhaps more pronounced among junior doctors who change hospital every three to four months, often leading to a lengthy commute home. The average distance reported by respondents to the survey was 25 miles.

Night shifts can be incredibly stressful, especially for a doctor just out of university who is faced with having to make life or death decisions. Driving home afterwards can be equally as worrying, as Thomas Bewerley knows only too well: “When I first qualified and was working near London, some of those journeys home were scary as hell. I’ve never had a near miss but have momentarily fallen asleep at the wheel.”

He added: “The experiences were horrible. You’ve got the windows down and you’re trying to sing along to your favourite songs and it’s not working. You’re on a busy road and it’s not easy to find somewhere convenient to stop. These episodes came out of nowhere. Starting the journey I’d be fine and within five or 10 minutes, I’d be in trouble. I was doing my utmost to stay awake but couldn’t.”

Although the issue is commonplace among the medical profession, the subject remains taboo. Helen Peterson, a junior doctor in psychiatry in the Midlands, said: “It’s known that everyone feels absolutely shattered driving home. In terms of people having fallen asleep at the wheel, it’s not as openly talked about. People worry that it might get around and they will be asked if they should be driving home or that the police might get involved.”

So what’s the answer? The doctors interviewed said they would like to see employers take responsibility. They complained that there were no rest facilities for staff to go when they’re tired. In response to their survey, Doctors.net.uk has launched an e-petition calling on trusts and deaneries to make some provision for on-site accommodation.

Peterson continues: “If a lot of people are raising issues, then employers need to look at what’s happening. I’ve never been asked if this is an issue by my employers. None of my colleagues would bring it up because of the fear around how it might reflect on you. We just suck it up and get on with it.”

All names have been changed

Has anything happened to you after a night shift? Does this need to be talked about more? What would you like to see happen? We want to hear from any healthcare professionals – nurses, paramedics, doctors, healthcare assistants etc – who feel this is an issue. Please comment below the line or email sarah.johnson@theguardian.com

Join the Healthcare Professionals Network to read more pieces like this. And follow us on Twitter (@GdnHealthcare) to keep up with the latest healthcare news and views.

"I fell asleep at the wheel": the dangers of doctors driving home

Why Atlanta Fell: A Mind"s Eye Report From The Ground

When the details comes
We’ll know what we’re manufactured from
And the skyline increasing
High-rise eyes see for you

–Beck, The Data

Winter storm Leon roared by means of Atlanta this week creating far more mayhem than Sherman on a bourbon bender.  Folks in snowier parts of the country have been wondering how 1 storm, amounting to three or so inches of snow, could carry a city so massive to its knees—to the level the place the mayor and governor are engaged in a public street fight about who’s to blame. I take place to live in Atlanta and may be capable to shed some light on problem.

Who’s genuinely to blame? Properly, everyone.

Thanks to a cognitive foible called the availability heuristic, we overestimate the probabilities of anything taking place, or not taking place, primarily based on what’s most readily accessible in memory. Because it is been a handful of years considering that Atlanta had witnessed anything like Leon, most of the city was working in a sort of brain fog about what could come about if issues had been worse than forecasted.

Atlanta Downtown Connector at evening (Photograph credit score: Wikipedia)

And items had been substantially worse. The forecast showed Atlanta taking a glancing blow from Leon, a dusting of snow and dose of cold, but instead the city took a punch to the gut. Inches of moist snow turned to ice in quick order, and inside hrs the roads have been a skating rink.

When no one particular is prepared for a worse end result than predicted, every person reacts at as soon as when the snow hits the fan. The “everyone” in this case contains the college districts that shut down halfway via the day, triggering mother and father to flood the roadways to get their kids. At roughly the same time, employers have been choosing that they ought to allow people to depart early to keep away from an final result that was previously a foregone conclusion: gridlock.

If you have ever driven via Atlanta at rush hour (that’s anytime among three and 7pm), you know that it is generally a challenging commute. Add to that tens of 1000′s of mother and father frantically striving to reach their kids, thousands a lot more staff trying to beat the rush, and a sheet of ice across the highways.

About individuals highways – many have asked why the city and state didn’t have emergency crews at the prepared just in case factors have been worse than forecasted. I’m going to chalk that up to one more cognitive bias I call siloing. Silo thinking takes place when groups don’t connect the details dots between every other. City officials really do not exchange information with state officials. Neither exchanges info with the school districts or Atlanta’s significant employers, and so forth. By the time emergency autos have been sent out to de-ice the roads, the predicament was already bumper-to-bumper. As well late.

After almost everything falls apart, siloing turns into blaming. That’s why Kasim Reed, the mayor of Atlanta and Nathan Deal, the governor of Georgia, have been exchanging blows in national information. No one wants to admit that their organization was operating in an info silo before the catastrophe, even although all of them had been. (Worth noting, the governor has given that publicly apologized for unpreparedness. Mayor Reed has also said “mistakes have been created.”)

The availability heuristic and siloing components of this tragedy the two hinged on forecasted information, which says a great deal about our ever-growing reliance on predictions. The Climate Channel—our go-to source for all issues weather—is primarily based, ironically, in Atlanta. We construction our days largely around what forecasters tell us is coming up coming (which is kind of a mainline feed into the availability heuristic), not close to what could come next if individuals forecasts are wrong. Possessing stated that, it need to be noted that The Climate Channel recommended of potentially harmful circumstances at 4 am Tuesday. No matter whether or not that was ample time for government officials to act is debatable, but I can tell you from firsthand expertise that it is as well late to stem the tide of site visitors.

Leon’s KO of Atlanta is evidence optimistic that our reliance on predictions, saddled with our in-created biases can, and eventually will, lead to unpleasant outcomes. Instead of blaming, we’d be better served by understanding.  There’s a lesson in Leon for just about everyone, and it will not be lengthy before we’ll need to apply the takeaways.

You can locate David DiSalvo on Twitter @neuronarrative and at his internet site, The Day-to-day Brain. His newest guide is Brain Changer: How Harnessing Your Brain’s Electrical power To Adapt Can Alter Your Life.

Why Atlanta Fell: A Mind"s Eye Report From The Ground