COCHRANE— It’s been 20 years since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and six years since first responders and others started gathering at the Spray Lakes Sawmill Family Sports Centre (SLSFSC) for the annual 9/11 Memorial Workout.
This year, the memorial event took place Sept. 10 but it took root Sept. 11, 2015, when Cochrane resident and firefighter Jeremie Huolt had the day off.
Instead of exercising and completing 343 repetitions with his crew like he would if he was working on the 11th, he and another firefighter friend decided to pay their respects by working out at SLSFSC.
“One year me and a friend of mine, Geoff Dommett, wanted to do a workout and talked to Stephanie about it,” Huolt said. “She said we could use the field and asked if we’d mind if the bootcampers joined. Everyone was in agreement to it so we’ve done it every year since.”
Stephanie Marello, fitness and wellness coordinator at SLSFSC, said it made sense to make folks aware what Hoult and Dommett were up to so others could join.
“We have a huge community of first responders that come and attend the gym here, and even extreme boot camp, so we’re a really tight knit group of people,” she said. “It affects more people than we really realized. This is just a little way to give tribute and get in shape.”
The exercise isn’t just for first responders, Marello said, and the work out details also get posted on their social media in case someone wants to do it at home. This year, around 50 to 60 people participated in one or both of the two sessions that took place at 9:15 a.m. and 12 p.m. at SLSFSC, many of them first responders — from paramedics, EMS, firefighters and more.
“Most years, if we were working on the 11th, we would do 343 reps for the 343 firefighters that died,” Huolt said. “We would do some sort of work out at the fire department and it just happened that I wasn’t working that day six years ago, so I wanted to do something. The chief lets us take our gear home if we want it, so we brought it in [to the gym]. Me and Geoff asked if we could just have a corner sort of thing, but the staff here thought everyone would like to join in. So that’s how it started.”
It all began with a regimen of 343 reps, but about three years ago the exercise was made more challenging by changing the number of reps to 412, one for every first responder fallen in 9/11 instead of just the firefighters.
The workout regime starts with one 200-metre lap around the track, followed by 100 push-ups, another 200-metre track run, 100 squats, another lap, 100 sit-ups, a fourth lap, 56 burpees, a fifth lap, 56 glute bridges, and then a final lap to finish.
“It’s a kilometre and a half and 412 repetitions for the 412 first responders,” Huolt said. “I think everyone enjoys it for the most part. It’s for a good cause. It’s a memorial workout, so it’s all about that. It’s a very, very hard work out so not everybody loves doing it but everyone appreciates doing it.”
Firefighters are encouraged to wear their gear while they work out to better simulate the extreme difficulties firefighters endured on 9/11.
“A lot of people don’t understand how hot and heavy our gear is,” Huolt said. “It’s pretty much an oven mitt. It has two layers of thermal insulation, and then it has a vapour barrier in it. When you sweat it doesn’t actually come out of your jacket, so you can’t really cool down and it weighs about 30 pounds just for that stuff. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get it all [the gear] this year, but I wanted to bring everything that they would have worn on 9/11 and that works out to about 103 extra pounds that you wear.”
The gear includes breathing apparatuses, which firefighters strap to their backs, lengths of hose, a bag of tools, a set of irons, which includes a Halligan and a sledge axe for breaking down doors, as well as a thermal imaging camera, radios and lights.
“We just have our little accoutrement that we wear but when you do high rise fires, you have a special set of gear that we have to take up with us,” Huolt said.
The free event kicked off at SLSFSC around 9:15 a.m. with a short ceremony and a bagpipe tribute.
