week 1: fitness tries to kill me

Next week I'm going to talk about sex. Now that I have your attention, I will talk about something else. But I really am going to talk about that next week. Kind of.

I hope you're sitting down, because I'm going to tell you something that might shock you. I'm not really very athletic. Is everyone okay? I'll tell you more. In 8th grade, I was on a volleyball team. I played for an entire season and never hit the ball over the net. Not once. In high school, they were not easy on P.E. skippers. If we wanted to sit out, we had to... wait for it... write essays. It was torture, but I managed to graduate. You're welcome for all the amusing essays, Conroe High coaches.

For some reason, I have joined this boot camp, this 6 week fitness program. Oh, right, because of my gut.  I'm still not totally sure why I'm doing it. It's 3 days a week in the early morning.

Monday was day one: fitness assessment. We did weight and body fat and other measurements, and we did situps and pushups and other things with a timer. I'm pretty sure I won Overall Worst, although a couple ladies had one weak category or so. Also it was the anniversary of my dad's death. "Your dad died on Monday?" Amanda asked, horrified. No, 12 years ago. But still, it was a little heavy to be so out of shape and have it staring me in the face that day. But my official worst category is running. Lord Jesus, come quickly, because it was bad. I was dead last. Also, I think I need to care more about my rankings, because I have this thing in my brain that is like WHY do I need to run fast, again?

If something catastrophic happens and I have to run, like some kind of alien invasion or robot army, I am so dead. I mean, maybe the adrenaline will kick in and I'll make it pretty far, but those jokers have laser ray guns and heat rays and stuff! What is the point of running from them? And I probably will just get zapped super quick, since I'll be in the way of the advancing robot overlords, running 1.0 miles an hour or something.

And then Wednesday was core exercises, and by core, I mean all of the bruised and bleeding muscles in my torso. Here's the thing. I'm doing it. I'm pretty sure I'm doing it worse than everyone else, but I'm not going home. Occasionally, I do collapse and lie on the mat, panting, in a pool of my own sweat, thinking dark thoughts. But I'm doing it. So on that front, I'm pretty proud of myself. The only other thing I've ever forced myself to do was bedrest for months and months, which was harder, really, because that's all mental. Oh, and we ran and ran and ran. And by the end my legs were like sandbags I was powering from my brain.

Today was when I wanted to write about it, once the trauma and the nausea of day 1 and 2 were over, and I knew I could stay in this thing. Today we did a bunch of stuff in the gym, high knees, heel flicks, something-something twists, side jumps, lunges, jumping squats, kettle ball stuff, a bunch of crunches and awkward dying roach exercises where you lay on the floor with your legs up and move your arms and your gut... I don't know. A lot. It's a continuous cycle for about 40 minutes, with 10 second breaks here and there, and occasionally a mutiny where we drink water without permission, staring stonily at our trainer.

At the end of week one, I am left with, well, extremely sore noodle-legs and a new awareness of muscles around my ribs, but really, I'm surprised at how much more I can do than I thought. Not that I'm doing it well, or correctly, or fast, but that I can keep going. 5 more weeks. Let's do this.