BLOG: 24 Hour Bootcamp Louise Pross & Jeannette Martens

Not a word about it

“What I can promise in any case is that it will be an unforgettable experience,” is organiser Jan's promise. It is noon and boiling hot, with 180 participants standing atop a hill in the Hoge Bersche Forest, where Meet the Marines' 24hr Bootcamp is about to officially erupt.

Upon arrival, we first had to set up our bivouac tent with our teammates, then we were marched up the hill by the instructor team of (ex) Marines for the opening speech, alongside the bell that we can hopefully ring in 24 hours at this same spot as the bootcamp's final signal. Until then, we will have to complete six ‘missions’, intermediate challenges ánd the dreaded Finex. Team Bravo's first mission is the Rapid Deployment, a speed march (2-minute walk, 2-minute run) used within the Marine Corps to move quickly out of a hostile area. With a light pack and 2 tree trunks to take along too, we set off, and along the way we are also given some team assignments (with varying degrees of success I might sayJ but fortunately there are burpees for when an assignment fails). This was the mission that I (Jeanette)personally found the toughest, perhaps because of the very high temperature in the middle of the day, or because of the fact that we were not quite ‘into’ the whole bootcamp thing yet. If this was just the beginning, how was I going to keep this up for 24 hours?

Soon after, it was time for the Rafting Contest, mission 2. Since the Marines operate on water a lot, we went up against team Alpha in two dinghies. For the first mission, we had to pick up a jerry can at a designated point and bring it to a landing point at a culvert under the road. For the second task, we had to swim under that culvert and move again in the boats to the next point. There followed a 1km move over land with the boats on our shoulders - on runs, of course, and uphill! For the fourth and final task, we had to take a bridge, which on this occasion involved lifting all your teammates, the boats and all the equipment over the bridge without using the pathways on the sides. It was great to be able to be in and on the water in this weather; motivation definitely sat a lot higher again after this mission!

If we thought we had time to recover a bit until our next mission, we were disappointed, as the drill instructors visited our tent several times to pick us up for intermediate challenges such as tug-of-war, tree-trunk throwing and the ‘Bunkr game’, which earned tokens for the team. Little rest, then, before the dreaded Drill Sargeant's Hour 2.0, but fortunately the temperature started to drop a little in the meantime and the sun was setting. This third mission was everything the name promised, and it was great. Again, it consisted mainly of running while carrying all kinds of objects such as stretchers, tree trunks, ammunition boxes and car tyres, cheered up in between by pushup, situp, bear crawl tasks and so on, again regularly fine uphill of course. The feeling of satisfaction was very high when we had overcome the Drill Sargeant, and darkness fell after one last intermediate challenge: getting a 100-kilo tractor tyre up the mountain in the fastest possible time. It may be incredible but that went a lot faster than then getting it back down.

The fourth mission was planned at midnight, a Tough Team Challenge where you and your team were given 25 minutes to build a raft from barrels, poles and rope, and then use it to go down the river and find a specific ammunition box and take it back to the starting point. The first group was shown a picture of the box in question and had to describe it to the second group that had to find it as well as possible. It was in the smallest details that this was crucial, a small green sticker, for example, could make all the difference, because if you took the wrong crate you failed. Despite the fact that our raft disintegrated as soon as it hit the water (oops!), we still beat team Alfa here.

I had no illusions that the instructors would definitely not let us sleep until our next mission at 4.00, and indeed a loud air alarm suddenly sounded at around 2.45. Out, run! A so-called Crash Move, or just punishment training, because there were rumours that some teams were stealing other teams‘ flags. When we got back to our tent, we had about 20 minutes to rest before we had to be ready for the Hostage Escape. In vans, you were dropped somewhere with a map of (at best) mediocre quality and a compass. Within 1h15 you had to find your way back to the base camp and, on top of that, pass three info points to pick up codes and solve arithmetic that you had to be able to show at the end. Of course, you were still in ’hostile territory' so you had to avoid being seen or overtaken by the instructors driving around with cars and cross motorbikes. Let's not talk about the time team Bravo ended up taking :P, but we had managed to find all the info points and codes in the end!

The last mission before the Finex was the Enemy Ambush, a kind of combined weapons and boxing training. At the shooting range, we were first allowed to ‘just’ shoot with biathlon rifles, then we had half an hour of boxing training so that your heart rate went up nicely, and then one by one you had to sprint back to the shooting range and shoot 5 bullets again. Every missed bullet here was a burpee (not so bad, is it?) The difference between resting heart rate and the high heart rate after exercise was very interesting and clear to see and you also got interesting explanations. You may already have seen the video of the ‘creative’ warm-up of the boxing training on Facebook :P, and all in all this was a really fun mission. But fatigue, muscle pain and all the other bumps and aches inevitably started to take their toll on everyone by now, and then we still had to get ready for the dreaded Finex.

The temperature and the sun started climbing again for the Finex at 12.00, which, by the way, would not start until all teams had neatly tidied up and returned their bivouac tents. With all teams together, we were drilled one more time; all materials, including the boats, had to be taken along and run! At the end of the route we climbed the mountain one last time to ring the bell and receive the coveted coin. Maybe the exercise had been made a little less strenuous because of the heat, or maybe the fact that we had to enter the water again brought some coolness, but the Finex was doable and we all reached the top in good order. In terms of facilities, food, organisation etc, it really was a top event. Not a word was lied to all the promises, it was indeed an unforgettable experience, and although everyone had moments at times when you thought ‘what on earth am I doing here?’ the day after, you'd still prefer to sign up for next year straight away.

I (Louise) have discovered how important it is to work in a team and that individual strength is nothing next to the strength of a team. Being allowed to cross the finish line together, even if you sometimes have to go back to pick up your buddy , that is something very beautiful. I think it would be fun to do this again, with a team of Taus maybe?

So come on Team Taus Gym, who will join us in ringing that bell next year? Oorah!

Greetings

Jeanette and Louise