Manito Park Insanity

There is a little-known fact that, every summer, from 6 to 7 a.m. on weekday mornings, Manito Park - one of the nicest parks in Spokane, and oldest - plays host to a group of women crazy enough to sign up for a month-long "boot camp." Some of these crazy women sign up for this "boot camp" three times in a row - i.e., all summer long.

Now here's the sad part: for the next four weeks, I'm joining them. And this morning was my first day. It's only 7:30 in the morning, and I feel like the day has been going for half a day now.

I keep telling myself that this will be a good thing. And it will be, four weeks from now, when it's over. For as much as my walking program is going well (and look at all the books-on-tape I get to hear!), I thought one more big jump-start to getting healthy again was the way to go.

I'm only signed up for three mornings a week, since next week I'll be missing most of it (will be in El Paso, visiting my mom). This means that I'll be doing make-up days - for instance, this week's three-day week will be four days...

Boot camp sounds difficult, looks not-so-bad as you get started, and then really feels like hell at about 6:35. I did this program back in January 2008 - with a similar goal of getting in shape - five days a week that time - nothing like overdoing it, right up front...

Here's the saddest part. I will have disrupted mornings for the next four weeks. Usually I have such nice mornings... I wake up early (around 6 a.m.), get my coffee going, feed the cats, read the newspaper, get on the computer, make blog entries.. Annie and Alex (my cats) hang out with me as I hang out, and it's just calm and lovely, especially in the summer when the weather is so nice, first thing in the a.m. When it's going to be 95 degrees for the day, the mornings are particularly nice (usually around 70 - given our altitude and northern exposure) and so I spend those first few moments out on the front porch in the light breeze, drinking my coffee, reading the paper...

Now though, that will not be how my summer goes. For the rest of this summer's mornings, I'll be lifting weights and running around tennis courts and simply making myself grumpy - on purpose!