All right, it’s official. I’ve lost my fucking mind. I attended boot camp last Tuesday. Okay, it was beat cancer boot camp but still, considering my fear and loathing of calisthenics and group activities, it’s a miracle that I didn’t run screaming to my car the first time “Sarge” blew the whistle. Not that the thought didn’t cross my mind. I’m just glad it wasn’t for real because I’m afraid I’d be the fat guy in Full Metal Jacket who got the soap beating from his fellow Marines. By the time I figured out what the hell we were doing, they had already moved on to something else. Even the two little girls who wandered over with their dad picked it up faster than me.
I had no idea when I wrote my last blog post that boot camp would be the end result. It seems I’m all for telling other people about charitable causes but when it comes to actually doing something…Umm, not so much. That’s why when my sister and nephew suggested that we join a team running in The Bourbon Chase to raise money for schizophrenia research my first reaction was, Oh hell no! But after looking at their website I somehow convinced myself that, by god, I can do this!What was I thinking?!My idea of exercise is walking to the mailbox to pick up a magazine I can lay on the couch and read. A 200 mile overnight relay where I have to run three legs of approximately five miles each, oh yeah, that's doable.
So that's what drove me to doing situps in some park I'd never heard of. I wanted to find out just how bad the situation really was. And it wasn't pretty. I'm going to start my training walking and try to build up to a light jog. The last time I broke out into a full tilt run was when I was thirteen and some old man in the neighborhood came to the door armed when me and my friends were out ringing doorbells in the middle of the night. There's nothing like the blast from a shotgun to get the blood moving and the adrenaline pumping. I'm hoping it won't take something that drastic to get me motivated this time. Maybe the free bourbon at the end of the course will be enough.
