Marshfield 'boot camp' attracts hard-core fitness enthusiasts
Toolbox
By DAVID DELCORE STAFF WRITER - Published: September 23, 2009
MARSHFIELD — Laying on a patch of dew-drenched grass, her eyes bulging and her face beet-red, Maria Beede was tempted to let a 600-pound tractor tire get the better of her.
Beede already had pressed the tire into the air eight times with her 53-year-old legs and, though her target was 10 presses, the Northfield woman looked both beat and beaten.
However, at the urging of a 10-year-old Plainfield girl and a 38-year-old mom from Marshfield — both strangers — Beede buckled down, gritted her teeth and finished what she started.
Success?
You bet.
Time to celebrate?
Not a chance.
Moments after Beede eased the tractor tire back down for the 10th time, April Farnham — the unlikely "drill sergeant" of an even unlikelier "boot camp" — barked, "Next station," and everyone around her — Beede included — was off and running.
The time was 5:35 a.m., and the last of a summer-long series of outdoor exercise sessions behind Twinfield Union School was just barely half over.
Although it was Beede's first (and perhaps last) taste of Farnham's fitness boot camp, the free pre-dawn workouts have become a rain-or-shine-three-day-a-week-I've-got-the-bug-spray-and-we're-exercising-in-the-dark ritual for a surprising number of central Vermonters.
They come from all walks of life and range in age from pre-teens to 60-somethings. Some have run marathons, others are reformed couch potatoes, and every one of them seems to fit perfectly into a welcoming-but-tight-knit "community" that has been meeting like clockwork at 5 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday and Friday since June 29.
Farnham remembers that day very well.
"It was pouring," says the 42-year-old Plainfield woman, who recalls skeptically checking her watch wondering whether anyone would actually show up.
"It got to be like 4:58, and all of a sudden, you see 17 cars start pulling into the parking lot in the pouring rain," she says. "It was awesome!"
It was also excruciating, according to Kate Radigan, who happened to be in one of those cars.
"After the first day, I literally could not move for a week," Radigan recalls, suggesting the intensity of early morning workouts.
"The next day, I was trying to figure out how I was going to step off the curb without falling on my face," laughs Radigan, who lives in Barre Town and works as a legal assistant in Montpelier. "That's when you know it was a good workout."
According to Radigan, she learned about the fitness camp by accident while leaving the Montpelier beauty salon where Farnham works as a stylist.
"I saw in her (Farnham's) appointment book it said: 'Boot Camp Starts,' recalls Radigan. "I said, 'Wow, that sounds serious,' and April (Farnham) just roped me right in."
In retrospect, Radigan concedes it wasn't all that difficult.
A working mom whose young children need her in the morning and the evening, Radigan says the idea of an early morning exercise camp was appealing.
"Nobody on the planet needs me at 5 a.m.," she says. "It was the only time I could find for myself to work out."
But Radigan didn't want to do it alone, so she persuaded her friend, Jean Smith, who lives out in Orange, to join her.
Like Radigan, Smith, 38, has young children and had long-since come to the conclusion that her only "me time" is before dawn.
Smith says she had gotten in the habit of getting up early and spending some time on the treadmill at home and didn't see the harm in tagging along with Radigan to exercise in Marshfield for a few weeks over the summer.
"It was originally supposed to be for eight weeks," Smith says of the summer boot camp. "I figured, 'I can handle anything for eight weeks.'"
After the first session — a rain-soaked, hour-long blur of push-ups, sit-ups, Indian runs and strength exercises — Smith, who works at the Granite Financial Group in Barre, says she was ready to eat those words.
"That class was just shy of sheer torture," she recalls, explaining that if not for an encouraging group e-mail from Farnham that was waiting for her when she arrived at work later that morning, she probably wouldn't have returned.
"It showed her (Farnham's) commitment to us as a group," she says, of the overriding reason she rolls out of bed at 4:30 a.m. three times a week and drives to Twinfield for an hour of exercise before returning home to get her kids ready for school and herself ready for work.
Of course, there are other benefits, according to Smith, who says she's made new friends, is more energetic, and feels like she is being a good role model for her girls.
Farnham says those are all good reasons to stick with a program that was supposed to have ended weeks ago, but will move indoors.
Thanks to the support of Twinfield Principal Owen Bradley, the boot campers, who are toying with calling themselves "April's Fools" for an upcoming fitness challenge to raise money for the American Cancer Society, will be able to use the school gym through the winter months.
"It's amazing they all want to stick with it," says Farnham, who claims she is "motivated" by the very people she tries to motivate.
"It pushes me to work harder," says Farnham, who became something of a fitness junkie after the birth of her youngest child five years ago.
A tall, slender woman with an athletic build and an always positive attitude, Farnham says she abandoned Weight Watchers for an aggressive fitness regimen and has since shed 100 pounds and run in several long-distance races, including her first marathon.
Last year, Farnham, who coaches basketball for Twinfield Youth Sports, started an after-school fitness program for Twinfield teachers. As the school year was drawing to a close, she says participants in that program urged her to continue working with them over the summer.
"That's how (the) boot camp was born," she says, explaining it has slowly grown — thanks mostly to "word of mouth" — and at one point there were nearly 40 participants.
With school back in session, several teachers have returned to Farnham's after-school program and some students are no longer able to regularly make the 5 a.m. commitment as they did throughout the summer. However, that didn't stop two dozen people — including a few new faces — from showing up.
"It beats going to the gym," Farnham says of the constantly varied exercise regimen she initially developed with the help of Marshfield resident Steve Duke, a salesman for Cabot Creamery, and Sean Fowler, a game warden from Plainfield.
"When you go to a gym, you're like a hamster on a wheel, and you do what you do because everybody does it," she says. "Here, you just bang it out and go home."
It's a log-flipping, keg-raising, tire-lifting, sandbag-dragging, rock-tossing experience, according to Farnham, who has had participants swing sledge-hammers, dangle from monkey bars and do lunges with water-filled sections of PVC pipe.
"It changes every time we work out," she says referring to the eight stations she set up Friday. "They've never had the same workout twice."
Duke, 36, says that keeping the workouts "fresh" was a challenge, particularly at the start.
"In the beginning, we used rocks like medicine balls because that's what we had," he said, explaining Fowler, an Ironman competitor with a military background, helped solve that.
"It was Sean (Fowler) who brought in the tractor tires, the sandbags and all that stuff," says Duke, who credits Farnham for coming up with an idea he never thought would be successful.
"I actually thought April (Farnham) was out of her mind," he says of the 5 a.m. start time. "I remember thinking, 'Yeah, I'll help. This won't last long.' But it has."
There is a long list of people that are happy that's the case and you can put Alicia Keene's name right at the top.
Keene, 29, of Plainfield has a family history of obesity and after spending time with her mother while her home was being remodeled last fall she decided she didn't want the health issues associated with being chronically overweight.
"I call it 'my epiphany'" says Keene, who weighed more than 400 pounds at the time.
"I decided, 'I have to change things,'" she recalls.
Enter Farnham, who coaches Keene's 10-year-old daughter, Cassie, in basketball, and just happened to mention she was starting a no-cost exercise camp for the summer.
"When she said 'free' and she said 'boot camp' I thought, 'Great!'" recalls Keene. "Then she said: '5 a.m.' and I thought, 'Is she crazy?'"
But, "free" is "free" and "boot camp" is "boot camp," so Keene decided both she and her daughter should set their alarm clocks and give it a whirl.
They did.
"It was really a bonding thing," Keene recalls. "We kept each other going."
And when they returned home after each workout drenched in sweat and often rain, wondering whether it was really worth the effort and inconvenience, there was always an e-mail from Farnham detailing what they had just accomplished.
"The e-mails are so encouraging," says Keene. "It's not just what we did, but the fact that she (Farnham) saw all these amazing things that we didn't even know we did."
Whatever it was it worked, because Keene dropped 155 pounds over the summer and her daughter lost 40 pounds.
"We really do get down and dirty," she says, of the mornings spent crawling in the mud, running in the rain, and throwing keg barrels.
"I never thought I would be that kind of person," she says. "It's really an incredible feeling."
The exercise is great, according to Patrick Healey, who spends his days minding Montpelier's cemeteries, some of his nights serving on the Twinfield School Board, and three mornings a week needling his fellow boot campers.
"The best part is the camaraderie that we've all established," he says of the friendly banter in the dark, the unsolicited words of encouragement, the teasing and the predictable round of e-mails that follow each workout.
On Friday, while Radigan was struggling to leg press the tractor tire and pointing out to anyone within earshot that her freshly bleached sneakers "still smell," Healey jokingly offered to add his weight to the tire.
That sort of friendly give-and-take makes the intense workouts more tolerable, according to Healey.
"I've always wanted to start doing something exercise-wise," the 48-year-old Marshfield man says. "It appears that I'd rather do it as a team."
Healey's high school-age son, Wyatt, was a regular over the summer, and his older son, Royal, joined the two for Friday's workout.
"We're early morning people," he says. "For me, it's a great time because I can work out and then go about my day."
Jill Wilson, the Marshfield mom who partnered with Beede and Farnham's daughter, says she, too, favors the 5 a.m. start time that many might consider a deal-breaker.
"That's the part about it that's so good," she jokes. "You're not awake until after it's over."
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