The hardest thing about my first day at Boot Camp was getting up. I haven’t voluntarily seen 5:30am in a long time and it came too soon after a restless night of half-sleep. It was so early that my dog, who for the last 3 years has acted as my 7:00am wake-up paw, was bleary-eyed and confused when I got up hours before dawn.
My morning routine started out normally: down 2 flights of stairs, let Finnegan (the aforementioned dog) out in the back yard to do his business, back upstairs to crack open some expensive dog food, throw back some food of my own - but that’s where my typical morning activities ended. This time I wrapped myself in cold-weather workout gear and head out into the early morning. As luck would have it, the rain was pouring down for my first day at Boot Camp.
I arrived early and found other participants in their cars, trying to keep warm before having to trudge around in the cold, rain-soaked field. At 6:00am, everyone congregated at the end of the field. We dropped off our gear and got right into it: 2 laps around the running oval and then back to the instructor for more. A few exercises later (pushups, crunches and some others), the instructor measured everyone (bicep, chest, stomach, butt, thighs) and gave us some more information.
Pretty easy. I figured this whole Boot Camp thing was going to be a cakewalk!
Until about 6:05am this morning. The moment I stepped on the field, I had to start running while holding weights over my head. Have you ever done that? It’s much harder than it looks, trust me. Many exercises like this one (movement combined with weightlifting), innumerable pushups, racing around a circuit of stairs and every combination of stationary weight-lifting and I was getting pretty damn tired.
Our instructor then paired me up with another participant in which we had alternate between exercises. The catch is that I had to do pushups while he ran the stairs circuit. So, the slower he was, the more pushups I had to do. But the faster he ran, the more winded he was when it was his turn to do pushups and my turn to run. It was pretty tough.
The end of class seemed to linger just beyond reach of each new exercise, like the elastic dental appointments that seem to stretch into infinity. Finally, we were done and I was completely wasted but happy that I made it through.
I wonder what Day 3 is going to be like.
Posted on March 5th, 2008 by Alistair
Filed under: Fitness, Health
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