Seal Team

This morning, my roommate Emily and I went and met our friend Emily (not to be confused with Roommate Emily) at the park for "Bring a Friend day" with her Seal Team. Seal Team is kind of what it sounds like, it's run by a former Navy Seal and the purpose is to get you in shape. I envisioned some drill Sargent in my face reminding me what a fat, tub of lard I am and forcing me to drop and give him 20.


I don't know how Emily and I got roped in to attending "Bring a Friend Day", but apparently we had agreed to it some time before and this week we got an e-mail from Friend Emily letting us know that "Bring a friend day" had been bumped up to this week. This week...Thursday, 5:45 a.m. be there at 5:30. Jigga Wha? 5:30 a.m. is not a time that I take much notice of because I am usually still encapsulated in my warm shell of blankets.


I did a practice run the night before (no not an actual "run", my main concern at this point was waking up). I went to bed around 9-9:30 on Tuesday night and set my alarm for 5 o'clock. Stupid dog that I no longer love (oh did I not write about how he ruined my Wednesday?) woke me up around 3:00 a.m. to go to the bathroom. I told him he'd better not do that to me on the next night or he'd find himself sleeping outside, I don't care how cold it is. When my alarm went off at 5 I woke up, but realizes that I didn't have to be up I turned it off, switched it to 7 and turned it back on.

But even with the practice I knew it would be different when it was time to go. Last night I had trouble falling asleep, like a kid on the night before the first day of school. I finally did fall asleep, only to be woken up a few hours later by that same dog I no longer love, at 11:30. I let him out and he decides he wants to play. I yelled some not so nice phrases at him as I stood freezing in the doorway and then ushered him back inside when he finally decided to grace me with his presence. (I suppose now I'll have to tell you the story...later).

When my alarm went off I had no trouble getting up, though I did decide that since no shower would be taken beforehand I would hit the snooze once and just rest my eyes. After that I was up and dressed and almost ready to go. Ready except for the way my body screamed that it hated me, my stomach hurt and I felt like I was going to throw up, I wasn't sure if it was because I was sick (turns out I'm not), or nervous, or if it was based on the sheer fact that I was up at 5:00 a.m.

We get to the park and Roommate Emily and I are standing on the outskirts of this huge team of people, all with their cool running outfits and seal team shirts and we've got out $1 gloves from Wal-Mart and I've got my wholly basketball pants on and Reebok tennis shoes that are beginning to fall apart (quality my rear). We tried our best in the dark to pick out Friend Emily from the crowd but it was useless, finally she found us. We had to sign a waiver form that said the word "death" at least 6 times. If the earliness of the hour doesn't kill you I guess the workout just might. I signed away any responsibility for these people and then we started our run. See, that's the problem right there, I assumed we ran most of the hour...we don't. Running is to keep the joints warm, and once they are warm it's time to do some blasted push-ups!

Then we stop, stay in the push up position and The Sargent (for lack of knowing what else to call him) has the guests stand up. We say who we are, what we do, and then what we do for exercise. I felt lucky that Roommate Emily was before me and she said she didn't do anything for exercise, because my answer was close...I play basketball (didn't mention only once a week) for exercise. I didn't feel the need to throw in the that I take the stairs everyday or that on special occasions I get to chase my dog around the neighborhood.

Then we do some push-ups, go on a little jog, which involved going up a flight of stairs believe it or not. I was a little relieved that I race the elevators on most mornings because this one flight of stairs was a breeze to the four I run up at least twice a day (that's right, I race the elevator, I have a semi-competitive nature, someone gets in the building at the same time as me but goes for the elevator I hurry to the stairwell and start running, but I don't skip steps, that's cheating. My record is about 50/50).

Then the Sargent has us bring it in, we all run to the middle of an open field (the one my ward goes to play ultimate Frisbee) and Sargent goes over the rules. We respond with a "who-ah" (I can't think of another way to spell it). We are a team so we call out things like, "log", "step", etc. Which is nice, I need help like that so I don't trip and embarrass myself. Then he calls up all the guests to the front. We each get a trainer to come up and work with us. Then we have a push up race...uh...I've done maybe ten push-ups in the last 5 years...total. So he tells us that between each pair we have to do 30 push-ups. So my trainer does them really well, I suck but I did at least 10, pretty sure it was around 15 but I may be too generous with myself. She does the other 15. That's how it works in the "races" whatever I couldn't do she did. It didn't start out with what I couldn't do, but you know, that's how it ended up. Each time we had a push-up race (and we had a lot it seemed) I did fewer and fewer, though I tried harder and harder. I didn't want her to have to make up for my slack. I must say though I didn't know I could do that many push-ups, but I feel certain that I didn't do them right.

At some point we did sit-ups. They had us sit on our partner's feet. I'm sorry, I didn't know this girl that well. Less awkward for me though, Roommate Emily had gotten paired up with a guy and she felt really awkward. But I finally sat on her the way I was supposed to and then she went going with her sit ups. My goodness she was hardcore. I counted 105 sit ups! Then it was my turn and I looked at her and said, "I'll be doing about 10." I don't have high expectations for myself and I knew I wouldn't be doing as many as she did, no way on earth. So I started, my elbows had to touch my knees and my hands had to stay behind my head and I did the first 8 no problem, then it started to feel like my intestines was going to explode like when you squeeze a water balloon and everything gets pushed in one direction. It didn't really feel like it was going to explode because that would have been much more painful. But I'm sure something was about to. I ended up doing 25.5 sit ups (yes, I count the half). My partner had made them look easier, but we were given 2 minutes and in 2 minutes I did 25.5 almost completely correct sit-ups (I cheated on a few)...that's sad to me. But then they had people who had beaten their old records stand up and announce what they had done the first time and what they did today. That made me feel good, a lot of them started where I was and a lot of them weren't where the female terminator (my partner) was. So she was an anomaly...thank goodness.

Then we ran, then we had a tree race (we both had to touch 5 trees and then run back and get in line in the order we finished). Then according to where we were in line we did a certain number of push-ups...but this time it was each. We were 11 and the cut off was 10...dang it. So we did 20 push-ups each. Then we ran.

After running for a bit we had another kind of race too; first we did three sprints towards each other, then three bear walks (okay, P.S. bears don't walk that way and neither do I! It was so hard, my knees kept knocking my arms out of the way and I would fall to the ground. The girl next to me walked on her knees every once in a while and she wasn't a guest so I didn't feel too bad), then we did crab walk which I was actually pretty good at (go gym class!) and then we finished it off with sprinting towards each other and meeting in the middle, or meeting at all, sometimes one person had to run further than the other (hint: it was never me). Then we took off running to do some laps. After we ran for a while we brought it in and did...you guessed it, more push-ups. After that we got into groups of 10 and picked the smallest person and held them up, each person holding up a part. For a moment fear ripped through me, I thought we would have to hold up each member of our group, I didn't want anyone holding me up. Also, if that was the case I felt we should hold up the biggest first and save the smallest for when we were really tired. But luckily for me we just find a person, hold them up and then we bring them down and do our stretches. Then we got to go home and my arms were killing me, push-ups go on my list of least favorite things.

I got into the shower and let me tell you, taking a shower has never been so arduous, I stayed in just as long today as I would on any day, but today wasn't because I was sleepy, rather I it was because I could barely move.

Despite how I may or may not have made it sound it was a lot of fun, and I'm proud of myself for doing it. I would like to continue on my own to try and improve how I do before showing my face again, but people are understanding and they all have a story about when they started and they all remember the limits they had. I would totally do it all the time except that the price is just too much for me right now. You have to do boot camp first and that's $250 and then you "join the team" for $95 a month (if you just pay month-to-month) and $70 a month if you sign up for 12-months. Maybe when the weather gets a little warmer and I've had time to stash the $250 I'll do the boot camp. We'll see.