From Civilian to Sailor

My Initial Fitness Assessment(IFA) was yesterday

I woke up around 10:00 am, expecting my IFA to be at 1:00 pm I thought I'd have a nice bowl of raisin bran, since I would have plenty of time to let it all settle before running around and doing push ups. However AT2 Young, my recruiter, called me and suggested we do the testing a little earlier to avoid the heat. So I met him at about 11:15 with a stomach full of milk. The push-ups were no problem. The issues started when I was doing the sit-ups, with each one my stomach made a nice *glug-glug* sound, loud enough for everyone to hear. With my push-ups and sit-ups out of the way it was time for the run. It turns out one lap around the whole of the Shawnee Square building complex is a half mile. I took a few last drinks of water and started my 3 laps.

It's hard to gauge how fast you should go. While running on the flood wall there isn't much in the way of scenery, you pretty much run past nothing. It's just a straight shot so it's hard to compare speeds to when you're running by stores, and people, and cars, and street signs. So I started out at what I thought was a pace a little faster than normal. I finished my first 2 laps in about 7 minutes, but by the beginning of the third lap I was pretty sure I was going to lose my raisin bran. The whole time I could feel all that milk churning inside my stomach. I stopped to walk every time I got out of sight just to let my stomach settle again. It didn't help my legs to stop and start but my legs weren't what I was worried about. I was sure I was over the time limit, with all the walking anyway. AT2 Young informed me that I ran it in 11:17 though, so I was surprised. Since I started out at a fairly fast pace I bought myself some extra time and finished about 2 minutes under the limit.

Well that's just one more thing out of the way, and one step closer to RTC! Now I begin the busiest week of my life it seems, dental appointments, DEP meetings, birthday dinners and lunches, bingo, Hanging out with a friend from out of town and more... makes me tired just thinking about it.


17 days... woah! that's not that many, I better start packing.