boot camp: the funest program I have developed. (if you call push ups in the sand fun)

Orginally to help RCMP/Police applicants pass their physical tests, it quickly attracted a cult like following for anyone wanting a challenge mixed in with some fun.  Alot of people passed by me, some took and passed the test and others didn't. Lessons were learned, hidden strengths revealed and no one left a failure.

This article is a true story.  I still can remember our victory hug.

Obstacle Course

ARTICLE: May 2001 edition of Readers Digest.
by Zoë Landale
("The Rain is Full of Ghosts" - my favorite of her novels, so far!)

I stand at the start of the course, a bright orange cone labelled RCMP. "Any time," Mark, the trainer, says softly, stopwatch ready. I nod. Ten seconds more. I'm filling up. Then I'm off.

This time I'm running much faster; I hope to heaven I can sustain this pace. Around the next cone I veer right, sprint toward my old nemesis the 1.5-metre ditch, arms lifted. Jump.

"Good!" yells Mark.

That means I cleared it, the back of my brain informs me. I'm too busy veering around the next cone and toward the stairs to pay it much heed but it brings an instant of clarity, of gladness. Last time I hit the ditch three times out of six - and that was an improvement on my previous performances. But then, that's not surprising. I'm 47. That's 20 years older than most people who apply to join the RCMP. And I've never been an athlete.

We're at the Vancouver YMCA. There are no age limits to joining the RCMP - all one must do is complete this truly brutal PARE, the Physical Abilities Requirements Evaluation, in 4:45 or less. The first part, an obstacle course, is laid out diagonally across the gym. It's six laps.

Up the steps, taking some in twos. My buddies in Boot Camp, Letitia and Anita bang their hands on the sides of the stairs, shouting encouragements. They know how many times I've run this before and not made it. But just as I can feel the difference this time, they can see it. I circle the next cone, back up the stairs, down, around the cone, over two hurdles. I feel like I'm flying. Heady stuff for a sedentary poet. My previous idea of exercise was taking the dog for a walk.

"On your front," Mark yells, steadying the barrier, an overgrown sawhorse that on me, perhaps the shortest applicant, is close to chest high. I fall over it and land on my front. Often, afterward, I puzzle just what sequence of movements I could do to get over the barrier but at the time, it all seems blinding. The first time I did this I collected an astonishing assortment of bruises, with one liver-coloured beauty the size of a dinner plate.

I come to, briefly, on my second lap, going up the stairs. "Awesome, Zoë," Letitia is yelling. Not only have I made it twice over the ditch, I'm still taking some steps two at a time. This is good. While I've never considered myself vertically challenged, I've only once met an applicant as short as I am.

"I know how important making this is to you," Mark has said. But he doesn't know why. I am desperate for a real job, something that'll enable me to contribute to the family coffers. And police work is what I've settled on: it's interesting. What else can one do with a Master's in creative writing? The university slots are already full. My published books bring me joy but little money. I need to pass this test.

Over the hurdles, I speed up, saying Thank you, thank you, feeling that flow. I am grateful for Letitia and Anita, for the row of applicants lined up along the gym wall who've gotten into the spirit and are also cheering me on. For Mark, whose voice I follow like a string through a labyrinth, who has always told me I can do it though I've doubted myself relentlessly. But still I come back. Once or twice a month for seven months I've been traveling from Vancouver Island to this gym. And at home I've trained and trained.

I fall over the barrier, scramble to my feet. Halfway there.

Around the starting cone and off again.

I'm rasping hard now. This time, I miss the ditch. Five-second penalty. Up the stairs, down, around the cone. I wonder if the new applicants know what breathing so harshly does to your throat; there's a momentary lull in the gym and everyone can hear the loud sobbing of air as I head toward the stairs. But it's not important. What counts is I'm doing it. I'm no longer close to blacking out as I run this.

There are times running the PARE when the world simply disappears in a funnel of pure concentration. There are only orange cones and rough plywood stairs and yourself rushing toward a ditch, two blue mats stretched across the floor, your arms raised like wings, and lo and behold, they pull you over, rejoicing, and you veer and once again try to take the stairs two at at a time, and the strange sideways scissor movement of your legs over the hurdles, and there's the barrier with Mark calling, "On your front."

Finally you realize this is the last lap. It gives you fresh energy.

"Good!" he encourages as I clear the ditch yet again, though really, I'm standing still and the whole gym is getting pulled along with my strenuous movements, I'm causing it all to flow by, resting on your beating heart, and it's heavy but I can do it, yes.

"You're doing it," your buddies call. "Pick up the pace. Almost there."

Once more over the barrier.

"And around the cone," Mark says.

This time you head in a different direction. Sprint. Every second counts.

"Push!" Mark says.

Once he told me that I approached the weights like a lamb, afraid they'd bite me. Today I'm a tiger. I pause for an instant a metre from the handles of the mechanism on the wall and throw all my weight against it, pushing those 36 kilos of metal way off the floor.

"Way to go!" someone cries. "Don't stop."

At some point recently Mark said, so quietly only I could hear him, "You'll pass this time," and although I didn't quite absorb it then, this now galvanizes me, I swing those weights around, my body at a 45-degree angle, push and walk sideways in an arc. Once the weights get away from me and clang down. I wrestle them back up, tilt the handle down, grimly get those hips down, and walk again. Six arcs.

"Touch the wall," Mark directs. "On your front."

Chest to the floor, scramble up, smack the wall with my hand. Shoulder blades to the floor, up, touch the wall. People are yelling "speed it up!" and I'm trying, harder than ever, and "Pull," Mark says.

This is the fun part. "Run it," someone calls, and I grab the rope near the top with both hands, lean far backward and do just that, caught up in the motion, feeling like this bit I can do, back and forth six times and everyone is stamping and clapping, all these strangers' goodwill.

"Touch the wall," Mark calls.

When I slam my right hand against the white-painted wood, it's over.

At first I can't hear what Mark is saying about my time, there's too much noise.

I stagger toward him. "Are you all right?" someone asks.

I nod, head down, desperate for air.

"4:44," Mark says with a fierce grin. "And that's with your penalty."

So that's how I run the PARE successfully, finally, and I wobble across the gym accepting high fives and hugs from people I know, congratulations from strangers dressed in white T-shirts and navy shorts. I stop at my water bottle, lean against the wall, then head toward the body bag at the far end. Someone else is already running the PARE and I cough and shout, "Good pacing," to whomever. The next part is  not timed. Mark and I know I can do this. I flip the 36-kilogram body bag up to my knees and then my arms. It's orange, filled with bags of sand. I clamp my hands around it, head toward the cone. Around the cone and back to the starting point, breath slowing, I've made it, though it does get heavier. It's a long 15 metres. At the white line, I gently lower the body bag, someone's dead dog or a torso perhaps.

Driving back to my mother's house, I cry with happiness. I've slipped out to the washroom and thrown up, run 8k, bounded up the 74 steps at Ferguson Point Teahouse 12 times, all as part of Mark's vigorous Boot Camp exercise program.

And now, several hours after the accomplishment, I allow myself tears of pure, exhausted joy. Coaxing my mother's red Hyundai through Sunday traffic over the Burrard Street bridge, I think life doesn't get better than this. It's like Christmas and my birthday, I keep taking the thought out like a marvelous present and gazing at it in awe: I made the PARE.

Even when Mark was laying out my training program and asked if I had any previous injuries or conditions, I never mentioned that once I'd had such severe back problems that for nine years ordinary supermarkets had been off-limits. I hadn't been able to walk more than half a block. Nor had I been able to sit up longer than two hours at a time. "You'll have to learn to live with it," well-meaning doctors said about the constant pain. But I refused. Somewhere, I knew, was healing, and I was determined to find it. Eventually I did.

Now, in the car, in the weak May sunshine, I let out a long breath, thankful, so thankful: I made the PARE. I never told Mark that once I owned my own wheelchair.