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Gaz started it. With the 141 long disbanded and its members starting to leave the service, he wanted a way to keep up his fitness without a drill instructor barking down his neck. It had been a long time since he had been the sole arbiter of his own workouts and initially, he'd allowed his activity to drop off. There had been a lot of lying about on the sofa, watching TV and catching up on all the video games that he'd missed during his various deployments. Given the state of his shoulder, it was understandable, but in the end, he wasn't built for prolonged sitting around.
He bought a Garmin watch.
This wouldn't have been a big deal, except he mentioned it to Soap. Soap was the type of person who couldn't see green cheese and suddenly he had one too and then Gaz had a friend request in the app and it all sort of spiralled from there.
The thing was, Soap and Gaz had always been competitive. From the moment they qualified for the SAS they competed to be better than each other. Suddenly Gaz's short morning jogs were turning into 5ks, into 10ks and into a gym membership so he could go back to lifting weights slowly and carefully. He’d avoided it before, not wanting to be able to put exact numbers on the damage he’d done to himself, but if Soap was lifting with his bum knee, he could lift with his fucked up shoulder.
I've got more steps than you this week, slowpoke Soap texted him one Friday night. Gaz despaired of the day Soap had found the leaderboard feature.
The plan for the evening had been to chill out in front of the TV and watch a movie. He'd been for his run that morning and racked up a respectable 7k through the fields surrounding the small town he'd settled in. He knew from his news feed that Soap had been out for a run as well, slightly shorter but slightly faster. The problem was that Soap was a short little bastard so he got more steps to the kilometre than Gaz did.
Before he knew what he was doing, he had his shoes on and had started a walking activity. He'd been meaning to see where the path behind his estate led anyway.
Later, his step goal for the day more than reached, he texted Soap back. You sure about that? he asked.
Bastard was his only reply. Gaz fell asleep grinning. He'd go for another run in the morning.
That would have been the end of it, but then they had the reunion. Ghost had finally given in and retired. Gaz had no earthly idea how he'd managed to be the last of them to be hanging on. (He tried desperately not to think of the wreck of his own shoulder and the long months of rehab that had ended his own career early, or the look on Soap's face the day he'd been told his hearing had degraded too far and he could no longer hit the required benchmarks. At least Price had just aged out and Nik had followed him as he always did.) They'd arranged a meet up in the pub down the road from Simon's new house with the intention of crashing at his and then helping him do a bit of moving in and decorating the next day. It turned into a bit of a piss up, as it had probably always been destined to.
'Here wassat?' Price asked, pointing at Gaz's wrist. 'Fancy bitta tech you got there.'
Gaz glanced down at his Garmin and grinned. It did look pretty fancy. He'd stumped up the cash for a slightly nicer one and he'd replaced the silicone band with a metal one for everyday wear. He still had the silicone and also a stretchy fabric one that he swapped in if he was going swimming, but it did look pretty upmarket.
'S my Garmin,' he explained, waving his arm and nearly smacking Soap in the face. A short scuffle ensued. 'Tracks my runs and stuff. This one's got one too.'
'Aye, it's a pure belter!' Soap exclaimed, intuiting that he was being talked about. 'Gies me aw ma stats an stuff. An there's a braw wee app what lets me ken how bad I'm beating this yin.'
Gaz pretended to bite the finger pointing at him and they nearly upended the table in their playful wrestling. The conversation was forgotten.
Or it would have been, if Gaz hadn't woken up over a week later to a new notification from his app telling him he had a friend request from Simon Riley. Fucking hell. He accepted, obviously, and prepared to improve his activity level yet again. He knew he'd never beat the LT in some skills, but he'd be damned if he didn't manage to keep his place at the top of the steps leaderboard.
(He tried to remember that he'd never been able to lift as heavy as Ghost. His shoulder injury didn't change that. Realistically, all it meant was that he couldn't even pretend he was competing any more. It was fine. He'd do his best and that was all there was to it.)
Two days later, he got another friend request. This one was immediately followed by a second. Price and Nik had apparently been listening more closely than he'd realised. He rolled his eyes and dragged on his running shoes.
The thing was, Price being part of their wee gang had an unexpected impact. Unlike the rest of them, who had developed the habit of looking at the news feed and then texting their banter back and forward, Price had properly looked into the workings of the damn app and started commenting directly on their activities.
It started with Gaz's morning run. He'd slept badly, interrupted by nightmares and a phantom pain in his shoulder that dissipated on waking and under the influence of a hot shower. He considered skipping the run, but considered the grief he'd get from Soap and pulled on his shoes anyway. (He knew it would help, but it was hard to care when he was tired and grumpy. Soap's mockery was a much better motivator.)
He took the pavement out of his estate and then turned towards the forest. There were a number of trails there and he could chain some of them together to make a longer or more varied run. He settled into a comfortable pace and let the pounding of his feet drown out the thoughts pressing into his brain. It was a long run. Once he got started, he didn't want to stop and he didn't turn his feet towards home until his grumbling stomach reminded him that he'd not really eaten or drunk enough to go much further.
After he'd showered again and sluiced off the sweat of his exertions (and eaten a giant plate of sausages and hash browns that he felt he fully deserved) he checked his phone. The notification was normal. Soap almost always dropped a like on his morning runs once he was up and about and Gaz normally did the same in return. What was unexpected was the number of notifications. Obviously everyone was looking at their phones. He had a like from the entire ex-141 and Nik and also two comments. He'd never had a comment before. He'd only really been academically aware that you even could leave comments on people's activities.
Price: Nice pace this morning. Good work, lad.
Soap: You going for lead this week then? I'm coming for you!
Gaz grinned and liked both comments. The heart felt appropriate given how full his own was.
The comments continued after that as well. Price, who never responded in the group chat and rarely replied to a text with more than a couple of words or an apposite emoji was suddenly almost verbose. He was always the first to like an activity and he almost never let one pass without a comment. They were normally little supportive ones, but sometimes they were a bit cheekier. There was one day Gaz had stopped at the viewpoint at the top of the hill to take some pictures and had forgotten to pause his activity so that it didn't count the stoppage time.
Price: Did you need a nap up there?
Gaz: Nah, I'm not the one who needs afternoon naps, old man.
Price: Cheeky wee whippersnapper.
It also had the added benefit of drawing the rest of them out into discussion more often. If one of them managed something impressive, everyone was there to celebrate. A normal day might result in any combination of support and banter, but a bad day brought out the best in everyone.
Gaz had got into the habit of scrolling his news feed after his morning run and again last thing at night. He was lying in bed, looking at what everyone had been up to and dropping hearts on them all when he noticed Soap's evening run. A few months after his retirement, Soap had realised that there was nothing forcing him out of bed in the morning and so he'd stopped forcing himself, instead simply running in the evening. He seemed quite happy with the solution. Gaz, who was a consummate morning person, didn't really get it, but he knew it worked for Soap. Tonight's run was weird though. It wasn't one of his usual routes, looking at the map and it was also less than 3k. Given the length, Gaz would have expected him to be pushing the pace, going for speed over stamina, but the total length of time was longer than Soap usually took to run a 5k. It just didn't add up.
Gaz: You ok, mate?
He didn't even think about texting instead of leaving a comment on the activity. Soap was obviously also sitting with his phone because the response was almost immediate.
Soap: Fucking knee's giving me bother
Gaz: Take it easy. The cold getting to it?
Soap: Aye. It's fucking baltic up this way
Simon: Look after yourself. Don't push it.
Price: Remember no one's asking you to hit targets right now. Heat and ice. Have you taken ibuprofen?
Soap: You're all a bunch of worrywarts. Yes I've taken meds. Got a heatpack on it now and an ice pack in the freezer for after. I'll be fine
Nik: :heart: :people_hugging: :fire: :ice_cube: :pill: :heart:
Gaz had to chuckle at the message from Nik. He didn't comment as often as the rest of them, but he was religious in liking each and every activity, even the two second one Ghost had accidentally saved instead of deleting when he'd caught his watch on his bag and started an activity unintentionally. When he did comment, it was always in emojis. Gaz reckoned he was trolling. Either way, it always brought a smile to his face to see the string of pictures that may or may not be related to the activity or the conversation. He often left pictures of farm animals on people's more rural routes.
Soap: Stop fussing I'm fine
Gaz: Fine enough that I should worry about the leaderboard?
Soap: :middle_finger:
Gaz started adding more information to his activities as time went on. There hadn't seemed to be much point when it was just him seeing them. He was never going to look back at them, after all. When it was a way of communicating with his team, it felt different. He started properly recording his different weight sets and then going back and editing the activity later to indicate the weight he'd lifted and the number of reps. He sometimes added a photo he'd taken on a walk and commented on the conditions. Previously, he'd never bothered with the notes section, but now he would sometimes add a little anecdote about the activity. 'Met a friendly dog' or 'first lambs are out' or 'nearly fell down the hill it's so damn muddy'. The others started doing similar. Soap's tended to be incisively funny and full of profanity. Ghost's were factual and interesting. He'd taken to walking around local historical sites and he often commented on what he was learning and what it looked like. Gaz learned a lot. Price's, when he bothered, read like mission reports. Nik either told stupid jokes that were barely related to where he'd been or wrote descriptions in Russian so poetic it had moved Gaz near to tears more than once.
Simon: That's a new pb. Nice one.
Price: Good work, son. Don't overwork it now. Slow and steady.
Gaz liked both comments and didn't reply. He didn't know what to say. He had lifted a new pb, both in weight and reps, but it was still far below what he could have done before. He knew he would never be able to regain his old strength though. The muscles in his shoulder had been too badly damaged. That he could still lift weights at all was incredible. It had helped when the rehab process got too difficult and painful, the sense of normalcy that lifting gave him, even when it had just been a little 1kg dumbbell. There was something bittersweet about his team congratulating him on his achievements, but it was nice to know that no matter what, they still had his back, that they were still there for him. He'd never thought when he picked his watch that it would have such an impact on his relationships.
He switched over to the group chat.
When are we meeting up then? It's been way too long.
Even Price responded to that one and Gaz fell asleep with an event in his calendar and a smile on his face.