Wed 20 Jun 2007
BARK!! (the sea-lion-sounding Marine Corps expulsion)
Posted by cindy under Health & Body , Recreation at 10:12 am[14] Comments
Months ago, Vanessa signed up for the Marine Corps Boot Camp Challenge which is to take place Saturday, October 6 at Camp Pendleton in San Diego, California, and extended an invitation to me to do the same, which I’d declined. The event is described as such on the event website:
EVENT FEATURES
The first and best! A fun and furious 3-mile course featuring obstacles used only by Marine Recruits at the Marine Recruit Depot. Get “encouragement” along the way at each obstacle by MCRD Drill Instructors. Compete as an individual or a member of a 3-person or 5-person team.
Great post-race party with plenty of music, food, drinks and beer, awards to the top 3 finishers in each category/age group, official race T-Shirts to all entrants. A very memorable day!
A couple weekends ago while hanging out at Mr. W’s male best friend’s (both men are former Marines, btw) house, we watched a new reality show called “The Academy” that depicts Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department recruits go through their “boot camp” training at a training academy local to us. I watched these people struggle on obstacle courses and wondered aloud whether I could pull off that training course. Mr. W had replied, “Pssh. You could do that entire obstacle course blindfolded.” Really. Hmm.
And then while hanging out with Dwaine last weekend, he was so enthusiastic about the obstacle course Mud Run he’d done that day that I thought about Vanessa’s prior invitation to this event. This morning, I finalized the talking-Dwaine-into-Boot-Camp-Challenge and registered myself. Yay!! Just to keep Mr. W in the loop, I put him on the email mailing list to confirm my registration, and I just spoke to him, and HE registered!!! DOUBLE YAY!!! He’s familiar with the training grounds from his own Marine Corp training days, and said the obstacles “are a blast.” Anyone else out there wanna join?
wow – I’m impressed and good luck! I’ve seen that show, The Academy – and it looks brutal. If it’s anything like that – props to you Cindy!!!
*doing my HAPPY DANCE!*
I am SOOO excited! You have no idea! Good for you! We are going to have a blast!!!
K – really? I thought “The Academy” was surprisingly tame in its obstacle courses, altho all the yelling and name-calling by the trainers were peeving.
Vanessa – *dancing, too!* Altho I am a little concerned about the fox hole. What’re we supposed to do with a fox hole? Jump over it? Go in it? I’m short, so what if I can’t get back out? Also, there are 2 pushup stations. How many pushups are they gonna make us do? And how high is the wall? What’s it made of? Do I need knee pads for the tunnel crawl? Okay, so I’m pretty concerned about lots of stuff.
How fun…and exhausting. I’ve have to have someone encourage me the ENTIRE way reminding me of the FREE FOOD at the end. ha
you exercise! I think that’s the key difference. 🙂 I can take the yelling at name calling…I can’t take a hurdle to save my life, well – a bit drastic, but still. I think, from what I’ve read, you OWN the course!
I hear the wall climb is really hard for short girls. One because they’re short, and two because girls typically don’t have as much upper body strength.
That might be the most difficult for you.
You might wanna get some practice for the wall climb.
Can you pull yourself up from a dead stop? From looking at your back, it looks like you can.
the fox hole? You jump inside of it and then shout “FIRE in the hole”
🙂
Flat Coke – I believe real Marines are all along the course “encouraging” you. Or rather, I heard they “encourage” the women and belittle the men. We get “Come on girl, you’re doing good! Look at all those wussy men behind you! THAT’S RIGHT, I called you a WUSS! You wanna panties to run in, you Nancy?!”
K – thanks for the faith in me! =) I’m gonna try not to let you down.
TurboTiger – Because you may not have been reading my blog at the time, I’ll forgive you for the lack of faith in me re the wall. 🙂 But I AM gonna make you read this: http://cindy.ocliw.com/?p=963
Jordan – Oooh, I am SO gonna do that! “WHAT fire?! Where’s the fire?” they’ll ask me, and they’ll see a little innocent look on a girl (me) as she replies, “I’m not hot?”
Wow you all sure have guts! :D. Good luck to ya! Let me know how it goes!
Lol, I like how “encouragement” is in quotes. I’m sure you will get encouraged alright! haha
I stand humbled in front of Cindy, the mighty wall climber. 🙂
James – I’m sure you can read about it on our blogs. haha
TurboTiger – now that the wall’s out of the way, I’m still concerned about the fox hole.
No worries, Cindy! They modify the course for “civilians” and all day they will let you know that you are just that, a “civilian.” The fox holes are metal barrels cut in half and stuck in the sand. You crawl under them and the DI are above you “motivating” you while you crawl. I recommend wearinf pants, no need for knee pads, unless your knees are sensitive and you need them.
Regarding push ups, last tim eif you did “guy” one then you only had to do 10 and if you did “girl” ones you did 15-20 of them, depnding on the DI. The alternate the routes each year, so them might have changed it. When you get to the p/u station and you hear “drop” just start busting them out, and if they don’t tell you how many just do 10.
We didn’t have a “wall” like the police academy ones, but this year might be different.
The walls that I saw when I was there are telephone poles and you can either jump over it, or they had hay bails so you can use as a stair to the top and then jump down to the other side. I even saw people bypass them and just run around them…so that is also an option.
So no worries….this isn’t real boot camp so you get to slack a little and they can’t do anything. HAHA!
Wow, that sounds easy. I can do at least 15 boy pushups right now. (I know this because I did a set of 10 and then a set of 15 yesterday after working chest, back and triceps, so I’m sure on the day of the run when I’m not working upper body that I can handle 10.) And I’m disappointed about the wall! I figured that’ll slow most of my competition down. Oh well. And pants? Aren’t we gonna get hosed down with fire hoses so that pants would add too much weight when wet? Does this mean I have to wear underwear? haha. (Dwaine, btw, is really looking forward to the imminent wet t-shirt contest.)