speaking of which...

since i'm on the topic of exercise... (apparently one journal entry qualifies as being "on the topic"...)i had a friend ask me once exactly how strong/big/inshape enough was "enough". i can't remember exactly how i responded... just that i wasn't too confident in my answer so i felt like i was stammering around the question by discussing how long workouts make the time go by faster out here. or something. it may be a year later... but i think i finally have an answer... there is something rather disgraceful, even dishonorable, about "falling out". for those of you that don't know, if your fellow ff's have to pull you out of a fire... or if you have to get checked by the medics and aren't allowed back in the game afterwards... you fell out. if you fall out more than once, you get an unspoken reputation as a liability to the crew and mission. this is a concern anywhere you go, but becomes very evident when the daytime temps soar above 120F......so in short, you don't ever want to be the one to fall out, or to fail at an assigned task. every day is a battle of hydration... another possible scenario to test the limits of your conditioning... another chance to prove the critics right or wrong. so how much is enough? when i can be sure i *won't* be the one to fall out... when i have enough confidence to work beyond the mental block of physical agility tests... when i know i have more than "enough" to get through or around every obsticle that could ever be put in my way... that's "enough". i don't think i'm there yet.