I planned to start this blog yesterday, just to give an insight into some of my pre-bootcamp nerves, to ask some questions going through my mind that someone out there may be able to answer. Except the plan, well, didn't quite go to plan.About Friday night
On leaving work at 6.30pm I thought I better go to the supermarket to stock on the "basic shopping list" that is to feed my life for the next three to four weeks.
Well let's just say it's not all that basic. Well not for me anyway who struggles with food shopping at the best of times: I hate cooking, I hate supermarkets, I hate it even more on a Friday night.
Having tried to give up caffeine in some sort of warped thinking that this would mean I would breeze through the first session of bootcamp, I was not in a good mood. I wanted to grab my meat, fish and veg and run. After all, I needed to be home in time for Eastenders.
Well I was flummoxed as soon as I walked in. I was the annoying person who just stops, mid aisle. I was looking at mushrooms as if I'd never seen them before. All of a sudden it felt like I was back at uni and I had no idea what to do. In the end I avoided calling my mum and grabbed the usuals plus a couple of things I have never bought or cooked before in my life – kale and chick peas. No idea what to do with either but they're on the "good foods" list so they were going in. I also grabbed a bag full of spinach for good measure – though no idea what to eat this with – and I was on the home stretch. All I needed to do was find some coconut oil. Find what?
Up and down. Up and down. What does it look like? Is it actually oil or is it solid? Up and down. Up and down. In the end I had to ask for help and after the assistant had a look we concluded it wasn't stocked. Phew. I'm not the only one who thinks this might be an extravagance to be avoided – clearly no-one else in Redhill wants it either.
So, feeling slightly deflated after failing at shopping and knowing I'm doomed in the culinary department, I sloped off home – three bags of veg in my arms. I just caught the end of Eastenders and proceeded to stuff my face full of Cadbury Clusters right through Coronation Street. So Saturday…
I woke four times in the night, once at 6am and then finally at 6.50pm, all before an alarm that was due to go off at 7.10am. On a Saturday. I didn't even know this time existed on a Saturday. I even dreamed about bootcamp. Bootcamp is already bad my health.
Feeling slightly sick at the thought of what lies ahead I had some yoghurt and grapes (neither of which are allowed after Monday) and had, for the first time, a mug of green tea. Oh my days. This is bad. This is like looking at something which belongs down the toilet and tastes like something the dog eats when it's about to throw up. An acquired taste shall we say. Well, bootcamp rules say I have to have one of these every morning so that's what I'll do, for now.
I drag myself into my joggers and jump in the car, as ready as I can be for bootcamp with Lindsay Gillam of Total Body Fitness. But yes, not before putting on some mascara. Sorry, no-one is seeing me without any of that, not yet.
Starting anything new as an adult drags up all those horrible stomach-churning emotions of being at school and having to read out loud, or joining Brownies and not knowing anyone in your Sprite group, of walking into a house party desperately scouring for faces you recognise.
Fortunately I arrived with Surrey Woman columnist Sara Willcocks but as we walked through Whyteleafe Park there was still evidence of "first day a school" syndrome. Luckily, a mutual dread of what lied ahead quickly got us all chatting.
And then bam. In the freezing cold (ok, a little bit exaggerated but I was blooming cold) we're running around discs, doing lunges, squatting to places I didn't realise I could squat to – and that was the warm up. The warm up? Wait! That can't be just the warm up!!
What followed was 45 minutes of my idea of not a very pleasant place. Running uphill, planks, press-ups, bit more running uphill, few more planks – on our hands and knees in the mud. By this point I'm wheezing, literally gasping for breath. At one point I even thought I was going to be sick. I was so relieved when we finally did some sit-ups. At least I could spend a couple of minutes on my back.
And that was it. I was a shivering, shaking, wheezing wreck but it's got to get better right?
Oh yeah. The diet starts on Monday. Maybe not.
Off to enjoy a couple of glasses of wine now while I still can.
