My friends are better than your friends

Well, at least if you are in my boot camp they are.

Today marks the end of the 3rd week of my “I’ll pay you to exercise with me” experience. The program is 4 weeks long, so I am almost done. Let’s review a little bit….

I remember very well how I felt arriving at the park on my first day. My only experience with boot camp before had been a shortened, yet more intense, program I did with a friend over a year ago – after she won a free pass for her and a friend. (What kind of door prize is this? A sick one.) Anyway, I would best describe it as a miserable form of torture. Every morning, it made me so sick that I could hardly eat all day (I found an old email where I stated that I had gagged when trying to eat 2 m&m’s 8 hours after bootcamp - see? Torture!), and as afternoon approached, I would begin again to dread the next morning. I was consumed by the dread, and the poor souls around me had to hear me moan about it all the time.
So why did I sign up this time? When it was longer? And not even free? I do not know. Well, I do kind of know… there was a combination of factors… including but not limited to the fact that I soon have to wear a bridesmaid’s dress that I bought last spring and I am too afraid to try on again – because I have an itty bitty fear that it’s not going to fit. (hi Emily! Don’t worry, I’m totally NOT talking about your dress. This is a dress for one of the many other weddings I am in this June!) And also there is the fact that I am lazy and undisciplined and I know it.

But as I was saying… as I drove up that day, with a great amount of trepidation, I remember clearly what I was thinking. You might think I was thinking about how good this would be for me, or that I was curious over the type of work-out we would start with, or hoping that the instructors would really know their stuff, but what I said to myself, and out loud I’m afraid, was, “Where are the obese people?”
Because the people at my last camp were all super fit already! They were some kind of professional boot-campers in that place. What I wanted to see was not simply out of shape, I wanted to see REALLY out of shape. Because what I was most concerned about was being the worst person there. I was afraid that if I was always in the back, I would get more attention (a coach always stays with the last person), and then there would be more yelling at me. Which, heaven forbid, might actually push me to work harder. So I was greatly disappointed that I didn’t see a lot of very large people standing around. I couldn’t risk slightly large people – I wanted to see the kind of people you read about in the news that need assistance lifting themselves out of bed.
Well, maybe I exaggerate a little – but not too much.

Soon, however, some less than obese but non-superwomen looking people joined the group, and I felt a little bit better. Until, that is, they introduced themselves, and each one had this to say, “My name is Becky/Linda/Kate and this is my 4th boot camp I a row!”
Say what? This is your 4th boot camp in a row and you are my people that I thought were not in super great shape? Knowing the kind of ultimate torture I had been through before, I was of the opinion that if you had been through 4 months of this crap, you had better look like one of these 2 people here:



I was not putting myself through this to look just as lumpy as ever. I expected magical transformation – hopefully more like the one without the mullet.

So, 3 weeks into it here, and I look as little like Wonder Woman as ever. But, I am ok with this, because I soon found out that this boot camp was not the fiery furnace of hell that my other one was! Yay! (My laziness beats out my desire to fit into a dress – sorry Brock.) And besides, when we wrote down our goals (and we did have to write down our goals – as long with everything we eat every day), unlike most of the other ladies, weight loss wasn’t my main objective. One girl said she was doing it until she lost her “muffin top”, and another said she couldn’t stop until she looked like Beyonce (I didn’t point out to her that I already have Beyonce’s body – I didn’t want to make the other girls jealous on my first day!), but I said I wanted to have more energy during the day, and to go out on my own and run the way I used to, and not be content with walking. Besides, being a girl who has not bothered to change the battery in her scale for a year and a half, I am apparently not that concerned about the numbers.

The energy part has come true at least! And I’ve actually really enjoyed it. And when I found out that whoever brought the most friends to “bring a friend night” won another free month of camp, I started to wonder if maybe after eight weeks I would see my magical age reversal. Which brings me, in an overly long fashion (sorry), back to the title of this post – I gathered up some friends and we won that thing!! Thanks to a last minute showing by one very reluctant lady who said I pressured her into coming even though she had made it clear she really didn’t want to (me? never!) We beat out another girl by exactly 1 friend! And she is one of the best in my group so I didn’t feel even a little bit bad about taking her down – I need this more than she does. So I’d like to give a big thanks to all those who sacrificed one evening (plus a few days of being sore-free) to save me a wad of cash: Tay-Tay, AP, Jane, Janice, Groundskeeper Willie, and poor poor Elizabeth – you guys are the bestest.

We celebrated afterwards with queso and margaritas (both of which are absent from my food log – woops!), and Elizabeth told me, “I knew when you told me you’d buy me dinner that I could get through the rest…. And I deserved it! Because I had just been through torture!”
Yes, my friend, I know exactly how you feel.