Up and at ’em – it’s boot camp time!

I’ve always had this idea that it would be ‘fun’ to go through military boot camp training: tackling relentless obstacle courses, belly-crawling through mud, shouting out “sir, yes, sir!” to spiteful drill instructors and ultimately digging deep inside myself to discover some untapped well of energy, strength and endurance.

With this in mind, I signed up in July to participate in a boot camp exercise program at a nearby church. It’s a well-run, four-day-a-week regimen of strength training, cardio workouts and distance runs/walks, topped off with a bit of prayer and praise, all between the hours of 5:15 and 6:15 a.m. For the last five weeks, I’ve sweated more before 6:30 a.m. than most people do all day.

Alas, today was my final day – and just as military recruits emerge from basic training with new perspective and insight into their physical and mental capacity, so have I:

• Mortal people aren’t meant to be out of bed at 4:30 a.m. If the sun hasn’t bothered to get up, then neither should we.
• The definition of a ‘heavy’ hand weight is entirely subjective.
• It takes about 12 times longer to sweat off the calories contained in a cookie-dough Blizzard than it does to consume one.
• I was so much better at jumping rope when I was in second grade.
• If I can do it, anybody can.

While I didn’t come out of boot camp in the form of Jessica Alba, I do believe I’ll enlist again when the program resumes next spring. But for now, I’m going back to bed ....