The Busy Marshmallow - Beep Beep

After a night of getting sloshed and wandering around Auckland Central acting like a bunch of goofs, I was more than ready for an intense day at the gym, burning off every margarita-related calorie that had managed to cling to my body. As an extra, I arranged for a half hour session with Adam after my regular Saturday workout.

My 'regular' Saturday workout is RPM at 9am, and Body Jam at 10am. My session with Adam was to be at midday. "Yeah, I can handle that.", the very deluded me thought.

Though what I had forgotten was that quite some time ago, I had asked Fitness Chick Leanne whether I could do the beep test. The beep tests are run by the gym, but apparently there is a lack of instructors who know how to administer the test properly, so she took it up with Adam to see whether he could run it. At the time I was on Uni break, and he was slightly injured and didn't want to put me through a test that he hadn't done himself. Time passed, he became healthy again, but I began work. You can only do the beep test in a room that allows you to have cones placed 20 metres apart for you to run up and down between. The fitness studios are great for this sort of thing, but now that I'm working full time, whenever I can make it to the gym, the studios are being used for classes. He told me quite some time back that when I booked a session at a different time to my normal one and the studio was free, we would do the beep test.

I completely forgot about that, and carried on my merry way.

The last time that I did the beep test was when I was 16, at high school. We were required to do it as part of our fitness testing, and even though I hated all of the fitness tests, this was by far the one that I hated the most. The entire class used to drudge up and down the indoor basketball court, thundering along like a big pack of elephants, and none of us wanted to be the first to drop out. I was always the first to drop out, but I didn't want to let anyone know that it was because I was out of shape. The physical education teachers weren't exactly pleasant to you if you happened to get a poor score on the tests, even if you were slogging your guts out. To avoid that, I used to fake twisted ankles, asthma attacks, dizzy spells. Anything that would act as sufficient justification for me getting low scores - when really, I had just reached my limit and didn't want to feel humiliated.

The highest I got as a high school student was 4.3 on the beep test. The nasty teacher that I had for my final year of physical education considered 7 to be 'very very average', and knowing that devastated me inside. In every other subject at school, I was excelling, but in physical education, I was not even close to 'very very average'.

So, on Saturday, I went and thoroughly enjoyed my 9am RPM session with RPMster Magali, and followed that up with an intenswe Body Jam session with Jamster Carla at 10am. And of course, I went in the sauna briefly afterwards - justifying that I needed to 'relax'.

So when Adam came towards me clutching the beep test CD, one word came to mind.

He started me off with some gentle upper body weights while waiting for one of the studios to empty out, his reasoning being that he didn't want to 'fatigue' me. Heh, if he'd only known what I'd been up to that morning, he would've realised that I was good and well fatigued, and it was wishful thinking trying to do gentle exercises to prevent me from being tired... since I was already there!

When we got into the studio, Adam set up the cones and put the CD on. I stood there, listening to the instructions - which funnily enough, I'd never listened to before. I'd only ever heard the instructions from our teachers, not off the CD itself. one key thing that the beep test voiceover guy said is that 'positive reinforcement is encouraged'. Huh. I certainly don't remember NO positive reinforcement whenever I'd done any of the tests before.

But as I stood there, looking at the floor in front of me, in the empty room, I thougth about how I was being much more fair to myself now than I was when I was younger. Back then, I was with a bunch of girls who would've influenced me to behave a certain way. Now, I was on my own, with noone but myself to influence my own actions. Back then, I had a physical education teacher standing in the corner, glowering at everyone, and telling off anyone who failed to reach the 'very very average' level 7 mark. Now, I had a fantastic personal trainer who has done nothing but encourage me to be the very best that I can be - someone who doesn't worry about the numbers of anyone else, just me.

It was all about ME.

For those of you who don't know what the beep test is, cones are set 20 metres apart (You can go to Google and convert that to your own local format, if you please), and you run between them in time to a series of beeps. The further along you go, the shorter the time intervals between beeps becomes. You have to try continue to run between them at a quick enough pace to beat the beeps, and you retire from the test when you can no longer keep up the pace.

I started off very slowly, at what almost felt like a weird duck waddle. Adam encouraged me from the off, telling me that I was going at a very good, nice, slow pace. The further along I went, the more I came to appreciate Adam's soft, gentle words of motivation. They certainly pushed me much further than a glare, a sigh, and a glance at a watch.

When I hit 4.4, I punched the air, to which Adam was probably a bit perplexed, though while I had known it for quite some time, passing 4.3 was definitive proof that I am fitter now than I was when I was 16.

I really wanted to get up to 7. I had this barrier in my head, even though the teacher had described it as 'very very average', it became a goal. Rather than a benchmark, it was a goal. I wanted to be free of this ghost that had consumed my memories of this test, labelling me as nowhere near 'very very average'.

Though it was much harder than I thought it would be, and I was swearing at myself for doing almost two hours of intense cardio beforehand. At level 6, I would have been justified to give it in, since I was struggling for breath and my chest was throbbing due to the reverberations of my heart going b-b-b-boom-b-b-b-boom. Yet the thought of me having to start all over again, psyche myself up and motivate myself yet again, that made me push on. I wanted to be 'very very average' that much.

My chest began to burn as I rounded 6.8, and I gave everything I had to hit 6.9, and I was almost out of energy as I hit 7.0

I tried to go further and make it to 7.1, but Adam spotted me missing the beat of the beep, and told me to call it a day.

I sank to the floor, heaving, sucking in air in big, loud groany-gaspy-hiccup like things in a not-very-glamorous manner.

And when Adam handed me my water and told me that I'd put myself through a hard, gruelling test and that I had done amazingly well to push myself right to my limit, THAT was when I started to feel that sense of pride.

I'd put myself through hell. And when it was over, it felt like heaven.