When I was a kid, they had the Canada Fitness Test, which was a series of six exercises (shuttle run, 1600 m run, etc.) designed to test the fitness of students, aged 6-18.

The shuttle run mystified me. Lie down on your stomach, hear the command, jump up and run to the bean bag (about 20 m away) (aka Spot 2), grab bean bag, bring it back to the starting position (aka Spot 1), drop it, pick up 2nd bean bag that’s at Spot 1, run back to Spot 2, drop the bean bag, pick up another bean bag, run back to Spot 1.

Every time I did it, I thought (1) it was a colossal waste of time (2) who would ever have to do something like this in real life? (3) it was a colossal waste of time.

Well, Canada Fitness, allow me to apologize, because it finally dawned on me that there **is** a practical application, and it goes like this.

  1. Start at midnight, while you’re sleeping on your stomach
  2. Hear the yowl of two kitties about to engage in active combat
  3. Jump up and run to where you think they are
  4. Realize they’re not there
  5. Pivot, run to the second spot.
  6. See them.
  7. Realize you forgot the spray bottle
  8. Pivot, run back to grab the spray bottle
  9. Run back to cats, shake the bottle (they hate the sound of water sloshing about).
  10. See cats scatter
  11. Check your heart rate
  12. Realize you’re not falling asleep again.
  13. Go and do some work