Friday, September 19, 2008, 9:28 AM
Boot Camp
By Kirsten Palladino
Day 26
Boot camp is over! I did it! Yeah!
This morning's boot camp was the final day of our month-long program. Only 10 of the 17 registered campers showed up, which surprised me as this is the most important day of all! It's a concrete way to prove to ourselves that we've achieved a new level of physical fitness. Plus, it's a nice form of closure to a month of very hard work.
As expected, we only did our PT test (as well as a warm-up). We started with our mile run, and I was hoping to beat my 15:33 time from the first day. I'm pretty sure the instructors outnumbered the campers today, so everyone had their own personal trainer, motivator and coach for the run, which was great. Later I would learn that Instructor Nikki helped Camper Melanie to kill the last hill and beat her time and Instructor Sandra encouraged Camper Amanda to press on, beating her time by a full three minutes. My instructor was also named Amanda, and we were doing very nicely at a manageable jog. We were able to carry on a conversation and I thought I was surely going to beat my previous time, mainly because I had walked a few times when I'd first run my mile on Day 1. This round, I was determined to not stop. Well, my body had something else in mind. Amanda had just told me we’d passed the half-mile mark when I fell. My right ankle rolled outwards, and I tumbled over it, internally screaming in pain. Tears hit my eyes. Amanda and a couple of people leaned over me in concern. Ugh. I was so pissed at myself! Yet the pain was so great, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to walk back. I got back on my feet and tested my ankle. Tears burned through my eyes again as I felt the tender pain in my ankle. I was cussing up a storm internally. I had really been excited about beating my time, and now I was just limping along while the very sweet Amanda gave me encouragement, never pushing me to walk on it. She even offered to have me carried back! But I knew it wasn’t sprained, just bruised. So after about 1 minute of walking, er, limping, I said, “Let’s run again.” Amanda was cautious, asking me, “Are you sure?” But I couldn’t just walk the rest of the way; my heart was set on running that damn mile, and if I could make myself do it, I was going to. So we ran. Not fast. But we ran the rest of the way to the finish line, where they called my time of 16:32.
I know you might be thinking that I shouldn’t have pushed myself, but my mind has gotten very strong over the past month, and I feel like I know my body a whole lot better, and I feel like I made the right decision. I finished, and that’s all I could ask of myself considering the circumstances. Amanda and Ramsey both said I could come back and run the mile during Day 1 PT test for the next boot camp, which, if you’re interested, begins in a week, on Monday, Sept. 29, in Grant Park. (You can sign up at www.operationbootcamp.com.)
As I sit here typing this, my leg is elevated with a frozen bag of broccoli on my puffy ankle, and I’m still a little disappointed in what happened this morning. However, I should also report how I did on the rest of the PT test. We did sit-ups, push-ups and dips. Here’s how I did in 60 seconds:
| PT | Day 1 | Day 26 |
| push-ups (real) | 5 | 17 |
| push-ups (knees) | 20 | 25 |
| sit-ups | 25 | 35 |
| dips (real) | 12 | 36 |
| dips (knees bent) | 7 | 17 |
All in all, I proved a lot to myself over the past month. I’m capable of a lot more than I even considered doing for the past few years, when I’d sunk into an incredibly comfortable sedentary lifestyle with awful eating habits and increasingly larger clothing sizes. Now, my body feels amazing, and I want it to look amazing, too. That’s why I’m continuing on the path of fitness I've set forth on. I'm looking into running clubs and joining a gym ... not sure which one will meet my needs best. Perhaps I'll do both!