Just wanted to share my story with my 2nd application.
Long story short, I applied once before when I was 30 years old, then life and family happened.
Fast forward for Nov 2017 and the itch came back to apply. Sent messages to Facebook Recruiting Team but they did not answer my specific questions, so idea of reapplying dead in the water.
May 2018 rolls around and I attend my kid's FunFair at school and to my surprise, I see the CAF there from a local Reserve Unit. I had time to kill so I started asking them a bunch of questions that were lingering from Nov 2017. They answered them and talked it over with my wife about reapplying.
I had just missed an Open House with the Unit I was interested in but still managed to book a "private" tour and once again, I asked my escort the same questions from the FunFair to confirm the validity of their (FunFair) answers.
I made it loud and clear with the Recruiter with the Unit I'm on my wife and kid's schedule in regards to future potential training and they were cool and understanding with my situation given one officer I spoke to also had wife and kids.
With that in hand, i jumped in with both feet with the online application in the last week of May 2018 to get the ball rolling.
FORCE Fitness test booked for first week of July 2018. Having been through the process before, I requested I speak with the MedTech after my FORCE fitness test and I let the MedTech know my full situation with my health and he gave me all the required formed in advance to speed up the application process.
Here's where it gets interesting, being that I'm 40, any applicant between 40-50 years old will be required to get blood work and an ECG done. I also wear glasses and already have tinnitus.
In hindsight, I should have gotten the ECG done first as if there is anything "wrong" with my heart, I'm pretty much medically unfit as my ECG showed an abnormal blip and my family doctor wanted an ultrasound done as they are more accurate. To this point, I had already gotten my eyes reexamined, ($120), had the family doctor fill out another form ($35). As everyone knows, when any medical stuff is required, we're working on their schedule and it may take a long time to get booked in by any medical professional. This whole process took me awhile to get everything checked out due to scheduling conflicts.
Medical and Interview booked for 4th week of July 2018.
By the 2nd week of Aug 2018, I had completed everything for the application process, mainly my medical files were submitted to Ottawa for further review and I was given the heads up by the MedTech it would take about 3 weeks to hear back from them. Which would suggest I should hear back after Labour Day long weekend. Low and behold, I receive an email on a Wednesday stating I've been accepted and was Sworn in by Friday.
So here I am, a 40 year old recruit joining the Army and found out its very common for people my age to do this kinda thing, call it a mid life crisis if you like, my wife thinks so. But better to give it a shot then regret it my whole life wondering "what if...".
I'm booked in for part time BMQ starting 2 Nov 2018 and gonna take it week by week. my biggest concerns are the ruck marches and the switching between normal day life to weekend military life.
Been doing 5k runs every 3 days or so since June 2018 to maintain my gains, cardio has always been a weak point for myself but now I don't mind running. Hello morning PT! lol
Keeping track of my run stats is super important to me, I average about 5:20-5:30 min / km comfortably, running an average of 5:15-5:10 min/ km is more challenging as my last 1.0-1.5km, my heart rate is pretty much running at peak form at 180 bpm. My average cadence is 160-165 and read the magic number to hit is 180 which I'll give it a shot on my next run.
Gonna slowly introduce resistance training as well. Need to keep in mind not to over train and cause injury as that seems to be a very common problem.
Either way, gonna be interesting now that I'm in, it still has not hit me yet.
