The zig zag blues

BY NICK CHURCHOUSE

This Boot Camp thing is good.

Okay, let's be more specific.

The getting up at 5.20am is not good. The logistics of taking work clothes into town and finding an iron for a shirt after sweating like a pig dog on heat for an hour pre-breakfast is not good. The way my butt twinges when I hoist a box of photocopy paper from the stationery room is not good.

But all in all, the general result is good.

We did the zig zag this morning. Wellington's Mt Vic and Oriental Bay residents will know where I mean. My spritely friend Wotwot will know where I mean because she lives nearby and is woken by boot campers grunting up and down the zig zag on a daily basis (apparently it is better than being woken up by your flatmate and his girlfriend grunting up their own little exercise regime).

The zig zag is our boot camp time trial, with the emphasis on trial.

Hamish, aka Captain Boot, tells us to run up the thing and back and do it faster than last time. "Yes Captain", we drone in our dawn monotone.

The zig zag is the sort of thing that just hurts you more the more you try to love it. A bit like a girlfriend who only wants you for your body (Lane tells me stories about this all the time).

But despite two helpings of apple rhubarb crumble (with icecream and custard) last night after the fireworks, I managed to shave 4 sec off my ZZPB (zig zag personal best ... it's boot camp talk).

This is when you find out it is impossible to smile and have a minor coronary at the same time. But there was a degree of joy deep within my wheezing, near-catatonic body.

And so we pounded the pavement back around to the training area by the beach and proceeded to eat sand, spit blood and skin our knees for the next 40mins. I think they call it embracing life.

Today was the last training session for boot camp, after four weeks, with Monday the testing day. The day of truth. We do the beep test again.

I'm not looking forward to it.

But funnily enough, it's not the beep test I fear. After four weeks of 6am ballbreaking gruntfests with Captain Boot I'll eat the beep test for breakfast and then some. (I hope he's not reading this)

It's the departure from the team. We're back to individuals, scoring our own times, our own rankings and our own improvements.

For the past four weeks it's mostly been team work. Egging each other on. Geeing each other up. Helping your teammates over that final unhurdleable hurdle.

That's what I'll miss. There's a touch of competitive spirit in there, but there's also the camaraderie of grinding your cardiovascular system into the ground alongside someone else doing the same thing. The weak pat on the back afterwards before collapsing into a puddle of exhaustion. The bleary wink and encouraging grin through tear stained eyelids and phlegm-frothed quivering lips.      

I can't say I got to know the crew like the long lost siblings I never had, but there's a bond there. I'm pretty loose on most of their names but I know what they look like when their tearducts dry out and they cry sweat.

You don't tend to get that close with most people.

And so come Monday, we'll carve up the beep test, do a few more push ups than when we started and I'll try and improve my appalling max crunchie count.

And we'll go our own ways. Fitter, faster, and a touch less fat.   

Strange these instances where you are stuck with a bunch of strangers for a short time and you don't know them much at all, but you've all bveen there together.

Whether it's stuck in an elevator, plonked on a tour bus somewhere, caught in the same bus stop in a monsoon, or trapped in a psychotic fitness regime nightmare run by a barking exercise maniac called Captain Boot, it's hard to say goodbye.

Don't you agree?

- © Fairfax NZ News