CG, about 1976 I think the CMO wrote in Air Clues about 'Fit to Survive' and in a moment of madness Charles Maugham, of Paris Air Race fame, and now SASO, decreed that aircrew would do the 1.5 mile run every quarter and so it was decreed. To improve morale, and take up, leave was withheld until you took the test.
With no practise and in blues, i did the run in the requisite time (OK it creased me). If I could do it cold I saw no point in doing it every three months. Some knockers on the crew exceeded the target time by a factor of two and never would have passed in a month of Sundays. To point up the idiocy, no time was programmed for remedial training and our irregular hours militated against regular training.
Now it so happened that we bolt hold to Machrihanish, to Gibraltar, and trips to Kef. I decided these were ideal places for the crew to do its quarterly run and duly submitted names and times to PEd Flt who then submitted them up the CoC. I didn't cheat; those who passed improved thgtheir times by a few seconds each time and those who failed continued to fail handsomely. Honour was maintained, Charles retired, and sanity prevailed for as long as could catch submarines who cared how fast we coiukd run.