I was so scared when I was told I would be an applicant. I can’t picture my parents’ faces but I have the same last image of them, I’m on a bus crying looking out at them as I leave.

I remember the early years of my trials. Waking up at 4 a.m. for the 10 mile. It’s funny how easy that sounds now, it’d be almost therapeutic at the moment. Mornings always used to be the most difficult for me. The 10 mile had to be run in under 1 hour and if you failed you ran a mile for every second you went over. I remember having to run 60 miles one day. I couldn’t walk for two days.

Once you were able to complete the run in the allotted time, you were given a recovery period of thirty minutes right before you had to lift the bowl. A large metal bowl that when filled to the top with water would weigh a metric ton. The bowl would sit on the end of a fulcrum and you had to lift it with just brute strength without spilling any water.