A Professional Athlete...Not Quite:)

PAF&R Station 80 - Aerial view show track possibilities...

SHIFT 33...Rick's ReFlections of his 32 years career in the Fire Service... 

Dude, I love my job! They actually pay me to workout:) Then again, if I had become a baseball player they would have done the same, but...we know what happened with that. Being here at Station 80 has had several benefits, one is having workout opportunities that many stations do not. As you can see from the Aerial View picture above we have amazing track options. Sometimes I'm out running myself, other times there are a couple of us or at times up to six. Though I never personally ran the 'Hood to Coast' in August, I would almost always train with the guys who would make up our teams. Half the fun of our track is our 'cool down' time when there is plenty of conversation, stories, along with maybe a lie or two.

Old dude needs to keep up with the young pups...

And then we have this PT room to die for, that even has a view of Mt. Hood. We definitely have no excuse to not stay in shape. Though not every firefighter takes advantage of our PT possibilities, this old dude knows that in order to keep pace with the young it's a necessity. I'll write a bit how that is going for me in future posts.

Yes Vern, that's a cool PT room

Though Fire Departments have always had some form of Physical Ability Test it wasn't standardized until more recently. Many departments now have what is called a CPAT (Candidate Physical Ability Test). This is a pass/fail test that takes the candidate through an eight event course wearing a 50 pound weight vest (75 pounds total for the stairclimb event) and has to be completed within a 10:20 time. I thought you might enjoy watching a short video that gives a demonstration of the CPAT. The journalist in this video, Rachel Thomas, does a great job just completing it. Most departments will have training sessions leading up to the actual CPAT to assist in completing the course in the required time, which is not an easy task.

Well, there you have it. Not quite a professional athlete, but..."I get paid to workout". How cool is that?