Six Weeks of Hell

Here are the tips my sister offered me on my first night of boot camp:

1.       Work out with intensity

2.       Wear black

3.       Don’t make weird faces

4.       Don’t make funny noises

Whoa. What? I hadn’t thought about making weird faces and funny noises.  I was nervous enough about working out at all.  For almost a decade I have considered walking around the river a serious form of exercise.  Now I was going to be doing something that could potentially make me look and sound like a crazed woman.  But it was time. It was time to get back some muscular strength and give my body a fighting chance as it slowly approaches forty.

We gathered in the gym on the first night. There were ten women in all. The anxiety was palpable. About half of us had children and the others I affectionately refered to as skinny bitches.  We eyed each other up a little and checked out everyone else’s workout gear.  I was in all black as were a couple of the other moms.  We knew how to hide the bulge. The skinny bitches didn’t need to worry about rule number two.  After a little pep talk we got down to it. Here is a summary of the work outs so far.

Session One – We are sweating, exhausted and ready to collapse and go home when our instructor says, “Nice warm up ladies.” 

I heard one of the other girls say she thought her uterus was going to fall out. A promising sign of progress, I hoped.

After what feels like a hundred lunges I was terrified to have to get out of bed the next morning.  And, as I expected, the next day is excruciating. It is painful to get out of bed, to walk down the stairs and to sit and get up from the toilet.   This continues well into the next day.

Session Two – One of the participants falls twice during two different exercises.  It served as comic relief (that sounds mean) but was a stark reminder of the dangers associated with getting off of the couch.

Session Three – Mid-way into the warm-up I pulled a muscle from mid ham-string to butt.  It rendered my right leg almost immobile leaving my left (already exhausted) leg to have to do all of the work.  All along I had feared a back injury.  It would have to be my ass that gave out first. But I wasn’t about to give in to the very loud voice in my head screaming, “Quit now! Save yourself!”

Let me take a moment to express that as well as doing boot camp I have also taking to eating only healthy food since Easter.  At this point, Easter feels like it was a decade ago. No pizza, waffle, pancake, cookie or anything else worth eating has passed my lips. I was eating spinach salad with one and a half boiled eggs for lunch until on the sixth day I started to gag.  I have been eating plain Greek yogurt for breakfast which I can only get down with excessive amounts of fruit.  I have forsaken my favourite beverage – tea, bag in, two milks and one and a half sugars – for green tea.  Kill me now.  And do you want to know how much weight I had lost last weigh-in? ONE POUND.  All of this sacrifice for one stinking pound.  But I won’t be beaten. Oh no. I will carry on until I have lost at least four pounds at which point I will celebrate by going back to eating exactly what I was four pounds ago.  Back to the workouts…

Session Four – While performing one of the exercises which involved bicep curls while running on the spot and kicking my heels up to kick my butt at the same time I became very self-conscious at the thought of all of my body parts flapping everywhere. I went to my happy place, got through it and put it out of my mind. The next day at school, one of my grade eight male students asked me if I liked my work out last night and proceeded to mock me (for the rest of the day) doing the very exercise I wouldn’t even want to see myself doing.  Time to cover the windows…and wear two sports bras.

Session Five – This workout saw us doing a group challenge and boy were we up for it.  We aren’t even half-way through and we are already feeling stronger and more confident.  There was a broken nail and a little lost blood but it was otherwise an inspiring night of fitness.

Five nights of workout behind me and it would appear that this whole working out thing is becoming part of my daily routine and something I actually look forward to. While sitting on the couch eating a bag of salt and vinegar chips is still my idea of the perfect night, this had offered me a glimpse of a healthier and stronger me.  Who knows what the next six weeks will bring. All I know is I’ll be keeping a straight face and wearing black.