Out of Captivity : Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

266 OUT OF CAPTIVITYrelieve stress. We all talked about how after exercise we experienced therush of endorphins that some people refer to as the runner’s high.I used to talk all the time about us being like lab rats in a maze. Well,those same lab rats, when they weren’t being used in experiments, livedtheir lives in small cages. So did we. I didn’t realize until captivity howimportant and freeing it was just to walk out of my house, get in the car,and go to work. I didn’t understand that at my previous intel job, gettingup and going to the watercooler, the restroom, the break room, oranywhere else provided me with a little change in the routine and someexercise. Movement meant freedom, and if we had been shackled physicallyand completely prevented from moving except when the FARCallowed us to, I don’t know how I could have endured it. As it was, wewent far more places and ranged more freely in our minds than we didphysically. We talked about those moments when we were so engagedin a conversation or were each taking on a task in our minds or revisitinga memory. At those times, we were beyond the walls of the hooch.At those times, we were free.Exercise did that for us as well. We each had our own routines andsometimes we worked out together and sometimes we did our ownthing, but at the Exercise Camp, we all focused on our physical fitnessin a way we hadn’t before. If the forty-day march had done nothing elsefor us, it made us realize that we never wanted to be in that weakenedcondition again. None of us wanted to repeat the agony of having everysingle footstep be an act of torture. As it is for anybody starting to workout, it was hard at first to get motivated, but once we got going on it fora while, we started to really look forward to getting up in the morningto work out. It also helped that we started to set goals for ourselves.Tom got into lifting weights more than at any other time in his life.Keith got into the stepping thing, and started out by saying he wantedto do thirty minutes a day. Once he reached that level and was able toachieve that goal regularly and easily, he upped it to thirty-five. By the