Today is Day Three of the two-week (ten-day) boot camp fitness class I’m taking at my new gym. I’ve always sort of wanted to take a boot camp class the way I’ve always sort of wanted to see if I could actually fit a regulation billiard ball into my mouth, and my excuse for not doing either was always NO NO NO I COULD DIE. However, the fact that my gym is affiliated with a hospital and is right there on the hospital campus has managed to convince me that I will not die if I do a boot camp fitness class there, and since the class is short I knew if I hated it I wouldn’t be stuck with it (which is more than you can say about the pool ball, probably).
When I first saw the class on the schedule, it said, “M-F 5:30-6:30 am” but when I registered at the front desk I was given a flyer that said it was “M, F 5:30-6:30 am.” “Are you sure?” I asked the girl at the front desk. “You mean the class meets only four times altogether?” She looked at the flyer. “That’s what it says,” she said. And even though there’s a HUGE FUCKING DIFFERENCE between a comma and a hyphen in this instance, I found I actually didn’t mind finding out on Monday morning that you bet your booty it’s five days a week all right instead of two, because if I’d known for sure I think the days leading up to this week would’ve felt a lot different, like facing a death sentence or, well, actual military deployment. Instead, I just sort of cheerfully agreed to come back the next day for more good times running around the track feeling like an alien was trying to burst out of my chest cavity. I don’t know, I was feeling spontaneous.
Yes, it’s at 5:30 in the morning. Yes, I know that’s not even in the morning but some spooky nether-hour when I’m sure garden gnomes come alive and scuttle around. I thought I would hate it but I’m finding that when the class is that early it gives me a pleasantly numb distance from the trauma for the rest of the day. Yesterday I went up and down seven flights of stairs TWICE and then we jogged a mile and then we tied bricks to our feet and did running drills. And it all just feels like a lucid dream, except for the catatonic hour or so afterwards that I spent at my desk.
And no, it’s not all that boot-campy. Nobody calling us “maggots” or making us march in formation in the rain or pointedly not asking us about our sexual orientation. Sorry.
