Bootcamp: Numero Dos

Day 2:

8:40 pm the night before, listening to Party Rock! live and watching LMFAO in person, I got this text:
"Wycoff tomrw. Meet at street corner. Need mats only after we return from the walk run."
Wycoff? Why? Why? Whycoff!?
Wycoff is a hill, a paved street, that goes straight UP. The nice houses are on the hill with platforms that lead down to the houses that are perched on the side of the slope that we were going to conquer at 4....45....in the AM.

I got the text of when/where while in the belly of the beast, sweaty, spatially unaware teens with odor problems, leaking glitter and hormones. I couldn't wait for bootcamp after that!!!

4:45 came, and so did the listening to my lungs weep and wheeze out all the pathetic days of sitting on the couch and hitting the snooze button.
I didn't want to get out of bed this morning, I even tell you what compelled me to pull up my heavy legs again and lace up my shoes again.
Some small voice inside my head was louder than the moans and groans of my muscles, my core, and my left shoulder.

First one at the park in the dark, I waited in my car until more lined up behind me, and...then, no one got out, until the first person caved to the hour. I wont lie. It was me. I just wanted to start it so it could end.

Gathering on the corner, yawing and comparing uphill horror stories, the instructor asked where her runners were. Runners? Pssshawww! Uh huh. You crazy. I know this hill, we go way back, and we are not friends.

We started going up... and then came the breathing and the chanting and the self-talk..."its not asthma, its not asthma, its not asthma."
It got steeper, "imagine you're a mountain goat, Lauren, hoof it!"
"wait, what was that noise? Something is making noise in the grass! Keep going, just don't look."
"If Freddy was chasing me right now, I'd be dead...I literally could not run for my life. I could get slashed to death right here on this hill."

Watching ladies backsides as they huffed and puffed up the hill ahead of me, I started to run through the prearrival instructions from my emergency medical dispatch training:
Tightness in my chest, shortness of breath, the feeling that someone is snapping a rubber band on your sternum over and over again...heart attack? Could be, I've already ruled out he asthma.
Pathetic.
Then I started to count steps, and imagine next summer and bikinis, this winter and leggings and hot boots, and yes, just wearing nothing at all and liking what stares back at me in the mirror when I get out of the shower.

On the downhill slope, I saw those familiar lights on the hills out in the distance. They looked like lighters in a crowd at a concert. Some of them were flickering, dotted across the hills that make this little valley I call home.
I've been up this hill a lot of times at night to clear my head...even with it being much easier behind the steering wheel, I could appreciate that I was able to linger a little longer and enjoy the view as I wandered back down.

Back in the tennis courts, minus the hand weights, I wondered what the duty belt looking thing was that was just laid at the end of my mat. Just bigger than a steering wheel with two padded grips it was called, wait for it, wait for it...the "magic circle"
You know what would really be magic? If I gave it a hard squeeze with these powerful inner thighs and it sent me back to my bed like I was being beamed up in an episode of star trek.

We did a lot of "magic" for the next 25 minutes
Squeezing it with our ankles while fake steering with my legs. The instruction in her sweet voice saying "its like a lazy Sunday, driving miss daisy."
Shit, I'd call shotgun if i was in that movie.
When we did the hip thing and all I thought of was that it's on my bucket list to look like Shakira. She's hot.
Sweating, cursing again at that streetlight from day one, I wondered if there was a possibility of getting moonburn?
arms. squats. pushups. half windmilll...

I'm not gonna lie...i can think of much better ways to work the inner thighs and it doesn't involve 14 other women and a tennis court. Ya picking up what I'm putting down? uuuhh hhhuuhh...

And then... it was over and I did it, once again. One more down, 10 more to go...