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I'm not saying I'm a lazy slob.

Okay, wait. I am a lazy slob.

But more than anything, I'm a pessimistic, lazy slob and at 4:56 AM when I was driving to boot camp, this kept running through my mind: "Camp I -don't-wanna..."

Alas, there I was at 5:01 AM (yeah, it definitely doesn't take 30 minutes to drive 2 miles, in case anyone was wondering) and trying to psyche myself out. There's a pool at the park and apparently it's heated or it was just damn cold out because there were huge puffs of steam coming from the pool. It was eerie, a strange bubbling vat of legs and arms popping up out of whitewater. The only sound was the "thump-thump-thump-slap" of people swimming.

That soon quickly changed as the rest of the enlisted women drove up. I was standing by a tree, trying to acclimate myself. This wasn't really working. One woman cruised up in her Expedition with some peppy techno mix blasting. I could imagine her, the night before, flipping through Shape or some other pseudo-health magazine, and reading an article that said "Download these tunes to get you motivated!" I felt pretty sure she didn't usually go to raves or listen to Lucas Prata at top-volume when she shuttles the kids to their respective non-denominational private schools. But nevertheless, she inspired me to perhaps rock some Prata on my way to boot camp tomorrow. Probably a better choice than my own inner vocals.

I kept looking around for Cathy but it was so dark out, I couldn't even see her. Finally I gave up and headed over to the pavilion where I then began to employ various Bear Grylls techniques for staying alive in cold weather.

Bear is all about the deep breathing -- getting lots of oxygen flowing through the body keeps you warm and sane. I realized that soon enough, I wouldn't have a chance to stop to breathe, so I started taking deep, slow breaths. Soon our instructor Stephanie turned on a small lamp and pointed it on us in the dark as she did Roll Call. This was a lot less formal than I thought it was going to be. I had this idea of us all standing in single file line, marching in place, chanting "BOOT CAMP LOVES ME THIS I KNOW...I'M A PIG I TOLD YOU SO" or something to that extent. The good thing about Roll Call was it gave me an opportunity to hear Cathy say "HERE!" when her name was called and I could somewhat make out her figure about ten feet to the left of me. I wanted to reach out through the darkness. Cathy! I'm here! I'm sorry I made you sign up for this!

We then were told to jog around the playground twice. This was actually not so bad. In fact, I can already tell that the jogging part is going to be my friend. Have you ever heard the Lions and Gazelles theory?

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.

Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you’d better be running!

I have my own version. I'd like to share it with my fans here.

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.

Every morning in Africa, a hyena wakes up. It knows it must move slowly behind the gazelles or else the fastest lion will kill the hyena instead.

It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle or a hyena. Just try not to run so fast you puke.

I think it has a nice message. Never be afraid to come in last.

After our two laps, we then started doing push ups. This is assuming you could do a push up, of course. Everything is time based (30 second rotations) versus reps, so you can pretty much go at your own [nonexistent] pace. After 30 seconds of attempted push ups, we then moved on to the always-miserable plank. The plank is basically done in the same fashion of a push up but you are on your forearms and it's static - you just attempt to hold your ass in line with the rest of your body as you hold yourself off the mat. I could tell by the shadows of people around me, and the faceless girl collapsing in a heap next to me after ten seconds, that we had a long, long way to go.
We then began using our weights. I have an interesting story about this. We were told to go purchase a pair of 2 pound through 8 pound hand weights, five pounds each being ideal. So Cathy and I hit up the Academy and spent about 12 minutes in the hand weights aisle, debating what weight we wanted to purchase.
Personally, five pounds doesn't intimidate me. Cathy picked up the 5-pounders and then picked up the light blue 4 pound weights and was like, "I'm totally going with four pounds!" I ridiculed her at the time. Come on. What's another pound, I said.
Well. I found out what that extra pound actually is at 5:37 AM. That pound screamed at me, You idiot! You had a choice!
Ten seconds to go, Stephanie would shout.
Shut up, Extra Pound. I can do this. You're just a little tiny pound.
Oh but I hurt, don't I.
So. Shut up. I only have seven more seconds of your bullshit.
Think of how many times you have to lift me. Over and over...
You are killing me. Think happy thoughts, think about Bear Grylls...he could kick your ass, Extra Pound. Take that.
Okay everyone, JUMPING JACKS!! Thirty seconds, GO!

The rest of the morning went like that. I argued with Extra Pound during the bicep curl, tricep extension, the back row, and the kickbacks. My body screamed "Go back to hand weights!" whenever we'd do push ups or crunches. As soon as I picked up the hand weights, I'd want to throw them back down. At one point, after our lap around the playground between circuits, gasping for air at the beginning of the bicycle crunches, I laid down on my back and suddenly noticed something horrific: there were stars. In the sky. Beautiful, bright, clear stars in a pitch black sky saying "It's really cold out!"

Are you kidding me? I was hit by just how damn early it was. It was still the dead of night. Not even dawn.

After class, Cathy said something to me that sounded like "My new goal is just to survive the class." I mumbled "Yeah me too" and stumbled off to my car. Steam was still rising from the pool, thump-thump-slap went the dedicated swimmers.

All that could be heard in the parking lot was the slamming of doors on SUV's and soccer moms taking off. I heard the techno mix blast back up and quickly heard it silenced. I guess she'd gotten all the motivation she needed for the day.

Driving back home, I realized it was only 6:35 AM. Still well before I would ever consider waking up on a normal day. And it was still dark. I was clammy and still freezing cold.

I realized only later in the day, when every part of my body started to curdle over with lactic acid buildup, that I had been very wrong in my original prediction of what the hardest part of boot camp would be.

Originally I had assumed that it would be the waking up.

Strangely, I was wrong.

The hardest part was the hour I spent trying to convince my upper body that yes, we are awake and I know we haven't talked in a while, but I'm trying to do a push up here.