Day 18

May 12th
This morning we did a 6km Ruck-march with the Commanding officer and RSN of the Ceremonial Guard. This is twice as far as we’ve ever marched and we’ve never had this much stuff in our kit either. Needless to say, they were really testing us. Sadly I was the only one who dropped out about 100m before the end. I was wearing an extra long sleeved shirt under the cadpat shirt and learned the hard way that that was too much clothing. Anyways, I started overheating and my chest and throat were closing up and I couldn’t breathe. My breaths got shallow and quick and I guess the closest thing I can compare it to is an asthma attack, but I’ve never had one so I don’t know for sure. I do however remember the same thing happening in a grade 9 basketball practice when that started with a 20min run, then layups around the gym for like another 20 mins and finally a scrimmage. Not pleasant. Anywho, after I fell to the side and the officers helped me get my breathing back to normal I was fine, just shaky and I felt kinda weak. They checked out feet again and I had to take off my toe ring. Poopers. Here’s the funny part; I ate so much for breakfast! Here’s the grand list: 2 fried eggs, a scoop of scrambled eggs, 1 piece of French toast, a scoop of beans, 1 yogurt, a piece of cheese, two packages of instant oatmeal (maple and brown sugar), three pieces of multigrain toast, a glass of milk, jam/peanut butter/honey/ketchup…YUM! Yes that is almost 3 lines worth of food! Now don’t go thinking that I am a pig or anything lol I didn’t eat much for lunch and supper, pretty much just meat and raw veggies. The lectures today had potential to be interesting but everyone was too tired to stay awake. At one point 8 of the 19 recruits were standing at the back of the classroom so they wouldn’t fall asleep while sitting. One girl even fell asleep standing lol. At least the warrant recognized that we were all exhausted after the march and made the afternoon schedule an outdoor lecture. We all learned how to pack our rucksacks correctly in a compacted fashion. What a wonderful idea that they showed us how to do this AFTER we have completed over half of the scheduled rucksack marches in our training. Oh well, it is so much easier to carry right now and it sits very comfortably on our backs. After supper we did an inventory of the clothing that we all got in the mail. This is the clothing that we will apparently be doing drill in when we get to Carlton (see picture). Then we did a fashion show followed by setting the optical sight on our weapons and giving them one final cleaning. The best part about today is that we are off at 7:30pm!! That means I am going to bed so early today and we can sleep in till 6am tomorrow because there is no PT!