Fantasy Amazing Race

Tuesday, 4 October 2016

• The ability to drive a manual car (or ‘stick’ as the American’s say)
• The ability to swim (a surprising number of Americans really can’t swim)
• The ability to read a map

So in fact this list would actually not rule any out any of my friends  - I’m spoilt for choice as I could imagine myself pairing up with nearly everyone I hang out with and doing really well.

Of course the producers of the show want it to be interesting, so they  deliberately cast people who don’t have all these skills. But assuming we could survive the casting process (maybe based on our good looks and engaging personalities), the other skills my potential partner and I need as a team are the ones I lack personally, as sometimes only one team member has to complete the task while the other watches on.

I would firstly need a partner who could eat anything. Often one of you has to eat a local delicacy - i.e. fried spiders, a kilo of caviar,  Swedish rotten fish or something equally gross.  The left photo below is of a team having to eat a plate of sourcrout, and on the right is someone having to eat pig gelatin..Ugg..

I’m not sure how many of my friends would be up for that but I’d at least make sure not to choose a vegetarian as a partner as we’d be eliminated on even the mildest food challenge.  I actually don’t have too many vegetarian friends so that hasn’t cut down my list of potential partners by much.

I would also need someone to address my other achilles heel - the ability to perform any sort of choreography.  In every series the contestants have had to quickly learn a local dance and perform it to the satisfaction of the judges.

I know without a shadow of a doubt that if this task fell to me, we would be eliminated from the race faster than you can say Tango.  Cheerleaders have traditionally performed this task well on the show. Unfortunately I don't know any obscure food-loving cheerleaders.

Which brings me back to the gym.  One of the lunchtime classes that they offer is Box-fit.  You put on boxing gloves and your partner holds up punching pads.  You get tired and sweaty as you build up to performing a sequence of boxing moves- eg. Jab-cross-jab, cross-cross-jab, duck-cross-jab, hitting into the pads your partner is holding up for you. I’ve really enjoyed it, and since it’s ‘free’, I’ve been 4 times already.  Today I convinced Clare to come along too.

For my other sessions I’ve happened to partner up with someone who has been able to pick up the sequences we’re instructed to do quite quickly, so at least one of us (her) knows what is happening and can lead the other along (me). Today I was working with Clare - which makes us a dangerous combination of incompetent people.  It turns out that neither of us is great at choreography and it’s a miracle that both of us aren’t nursing broken noses from ducking instead of weaving, jabbing instead of jumping. In fact if Clare had managed to connect any of her knee kicks (her legs being about a million times more powerful than her arms), I’d be in hospital getting my kidneys reconstructed from a million tiny pieces right now.

We did survive the class though, and it was fun.

But I do have to rule Clare out of my fantasy Amazing Race team. Sorry Clare.