36 hours to surpass yourself and push your limits

I did my first 36-hour commando training and I loved it!

 

The start of the bootcamp

The gathering was at 11 p.m.! At midnight, we started the equipment check, we were 3 groups of 10 people. Once the equipment check was done, penalties were given to groups whose participants did not have the right equipment, such as a classic compass instead of a thousandth compass. Yes, we do not compromise on equipment😉

 

Cardio to start

After a few penalties to warm up, it was time for a few hours of intense cardio with the backpack on, burpees, push-ups, duck walk, everything went by, even jumping stairs blindfolded.

 

The joys of the night

Then, we had to go on a reconnaissance mission by crawling across a lake with the backpack on in a hostile environment. According to the instructors, we were not discreet enough, we lacked some mud on our faces, so we did the mission in the lake a second time.

 

First aid training

Once this mission was accomplished, we had a break. We had a small mountain first aid course to understand and detect heat stroke, training to tie figure-eight knots with a rope, as well as learning to read a map, navigate, and use a compass.

 

The end of the first night

Once these concepts were explained, it was time to leave for the second part of the night, to fetch beacons at 3 diametrically opposite points.

One person in the group started having ankle pain, vomiting. Group support is essential in this kind of situation. A comrade carried his backpack all night. We lost a lot of time retrieving the first beacon. We realized it was going to be complicated to get the 3rd beacon. But we made the necessary efforts to arrive on time and retrieve the 3rd beacon within the allotted time :)

 

The day begins

Dawn breaks and we have to leave for the first activity of the day, caving. Since we had no access to phones or the possibility to keep our watches, the sense of time was distorted. So, to get to each meeting point, we had to walk quickly, but stay in a group and adapt to the injured person. Finding the cave proved complicated because it is closed to the public. But we arrived early for the meeting point. The cave entrance is narrow and I thought about the mess I had gotten myself into 😂 Finally, it went well, it was quite narrow at times, but we managed to get through. We rappelled down and climbed back up the entire route to exit the cave.

Once the first activity was finished, it was time for canyoning. It was very hot, we had to walk to the river. It was cold but with the outside temperature it felt great. We climbed rocks, jumped into the water. Everything went well, we forgot we hadn’t slept the night by staying active. What I feared most happened, a first jump from 4 m high. The instructor explained how to jump safely without hurting myself. Nothing forced me, but it was important to me to jump from 4 m even though I’m afraid of heights, I wanted to conquer my fears. After breathing deeply for a long time, I decided to jump into the water. What a joy to say I did something that scared me. A few minutes later, another jump was presented to us, 3.50 m. Again, I decided to jump, after a few breaths, I jumped and I can say I tamed my fears, not once, but twice.

After this great activity, full of lessons, we had to rescue a person suffering from heat stroke, we assisted and carried them on a stretcher for many minutes.

 

The bootcamp struggles

It was late afternoon and we had to reach the camp for the evening. We took a route that was a dead end. We took the wrong road and had to go back and find our way. Mentally, it was hard to have to return to the starting point because we still had a long way to go to reach the meeting point. Everyone was struggling, but we managed to regroup, keep confidence, and continue on. Night fell and we arrived at the camp all tired, exhausted.

The good news is that we got a dinner, our first meal in 24 hours. It felt so good. We would also be able to sleep for a few hours. We had to take turns because at any moment, we could be called for the night challenge. We were suddenly woken up, having slept about 2 hours, we had to dismantle the camp and get to the meeting point in 20 minutes.

 

The second night

We were explained the night challenge, to go from point A to point B without being detected because we would pass through a hostile environment. We had to watch out for cars as they could belong to enemies. No choice, we had to jump into ravines near cars and stay as discreet as possible, no lights, lots of hide and seek. We lost time again because we got lost on the way during the night, took a wrong route. We arrived late, dawn was breaking and we had two knowledge restitution tests. We passed the first, but not the second, so we had to do a lot of burpees.

We met the other two groups and the instructors were in great shape, they wanted to push us to our limits one last time. We were all tied in pairs with a rope. The goal was to arrive on time at the final point, so we had to walk very fast or jog. The backpack hurt so much on my back, the only thing I thought about was the songs we sang to pass the time and forget the pain. Finally, we stopped in the middle of the forest to do burpees, push-ups, squats, running… And there, I realized I still had plenty of energy and that I was going to finish this training and go home with the medal. In fact, from early morning, I knew it was in the bag because the hardest part was done.

The medal ceremony was so beautiful. Everything I accomplished with my comrades, all the efforts to reach the end finally paid off. I felt a lot of emotion when I was handed my medal. I could still lose the medal because we had to go down to the village for the chief instructor to ring the bell and end the training. But well, I’m not going to let anyone take my medal away 😁

 

It was a magical experience that required a lot of physical and mental resources. I absolutely recommend it because it allowed me to see what my limits were and how far my mind was capable of holding out.