Hey it ain't funny anymore...

On my recent business trip a new employee told me that he couldn't get an explanation from the other workers on what I looked like.

He then said, "They should have just said he looks like Scot's (my local manager) older brother."

Yes Scot and I are of the same build, both have similar hair cuts, both have gray hair...but Scot is 13 years my elder. Grrrrrr!

So, armed with this comment, I go to the gym on Wednesday night and the YMCA in Des Moines has treadmills which have a "Performance Program" function. I scrolled through them and discovered that it had the running components of the fitness tests for the different branches of the armed forces and federal law enforcement. Yep you guessed it, OLS, Old Lion Syndrome kicked in.

Figuring the Marine test would be the hardest, I selected it. I later found out that it was only half the distance, 1.5 miles, of the real test, but it gave you the score based on holding that pace for the full 3 miles. Not wanting to limit myself to only one military career choice, I did the cool down and then proceeded with the Army test, then the Air Force.

Well I didn't run my 5k times, but I did run well enough to score an 82 out of 100 points on the Marine and Air Force tests, and 85 points on the Army test for my age group.

I then went back to the hotel, looked up the requirements for the Army test (The Marines require pull-ups instead of push-ups, hard to do in the hotel room) and decided to see where I would score.

40 push ups in 2 minutes (66pts) , 56 sit-ups in 2 minutes (79pts), and my 85 point run, Netted me a score of 230 out of 300. Good for infantry, even good to get into Airborne training, but not at good enough to be a Ranger, and not the preferred level to survive Airborne training.

Anyway, I'm going to try this out again, it was fun to assess my fitness level. Next time I won't try all three branches at once,just the Army. I will do the push-ups and sit-ups first and then run the 2 miles like a race as prescribed in the manual.

Here's some links for you so you can try it if you want to and measure your score. (copy and paste into browser)

http://www.hooah4health.com/4you/apft.htm
http://www.army.com/enlist/APFT.html

Oh yeah, and thanks to OLS, I was hurting bad the next day.