Do you maggots understand that?

My dear friend Kate invited me to join her this week at the fitness boot camp (www.womensbootcampfitness.com/womens-colorado-bootcamp/index.aspx) she attends. She's been going for a while now and loves it. So I thought what the heck. I work out. I can handle it.

The alarm went off at 6:10 a.m. yesterday morning, and I popped out of bed, ready to face this Joe character I'd been hearing about. With spring here, Joe plans to conduct these sessions outside at a park. But the morning was foggy and 40 degrees, so we worked out in a gym. But this isn't your typical gym. There are no cardio machines or namby pamby free weights here.

Joe smiled at me and introduced himself as if he were a kind soul. Hidden beneath that friendly exterior is the heart of a drill sergeant. We started out with a pretty simple warm up, then moved on to exercises with a partner. From there we did two rounds of the circuit -- which was set up to look a bit like a torture chamber, with resistance bands, medicine balls, a stability ball, kettlebell and more.

Ok, I'm exaggerating. It only looked like torture because I hadn't had my coffee yet. It is funny, though, how long 45 seconds can seem. This morning, I can really feel it in my ab muscles.

When I thought my recent Kettlebell workouts were tough, I had yet to meet this man. Now, this isn't to scare you away. Because he's tough but he's motivating. I don't think he'd make the entire group drop and give him 50 if I had pooped out halfway through a set of crunches or squats, but I wasn't going to test him.

So I pushed myself and made it through the circuit twice, just like the other people in the group. I have a bit of a competitive side, and if those other women can do it, so can I, dammit! It didn't matter to me that they'd been doing it longer or that some of them were younger than I am. I was not about to be the one who quit. And I'm not positive there wouldn't have been push-ups to do latrines to clean if I'd wimped out.