The Bitch Is Back

It's been nearly two years, but I completed the old run I used to do before the accident. The metalwork appears to be holding up and despite the very slow time I'm rather chuffed to have shuffled round a few miles of green countryside. Hopefully a bit of muscle memory will return and I can press on a little step at a time. This is against my consultant's advice, but what the hell, life is for living. The new me has also started going to the theatre but Mrs Stressed has started to take advantage, dragging me along to a Shakespeare play. It took me half an hour to work out they were actually speaking English but once I got the gist of it - it was OK.

Despite the injury I've always been reasonably fit. Even now I would fancy myself to hold my own against some of the youngsters. I don't know how I would have fared the past couple of years if I'd had to complete a fitness test. At times I could hardly walk straight and if I'm honest shouldn't have been on the streets when I returned. I lasted about 3 days in the office on restricted duty before I sneaked back patrolling. My force doesn't have a yearly fitness test apart from specialised roles, but I understand some elsewhere have to reach a set standard of fitness to continue operational policing. If you are reading this and yours does, let me know what happens if you fail the test.

It used to be the case that a level of fitness was needed to be a police officer. At training school the whole intake was up and running before breakfast two days a week to complete a few miles. This changed years ago for some reason and we appear to rely on a bleep test where you don't have to reach a high level. I've seen plenty of officers who are physically unfit but I suppose as long as they can drive the car and do the job answering calls there's little the employer can do about it. Of course in an ideal world there might be some physical training incorporated into the working day, but ultimately it's down to the individuals own professional standards to fit it in somewhere in your spare time.

This is probably the start of my long good bye. I only started blogging because I was unable to pound the streets, and I'm finally beginning to see the light at the end of what's been a bloody long tunnel. I'm now off out to partake of extra cold Guinness and put the world to rights.