I hurt all over. I hurt in places I forgot I had. From the top of my head to the balls of my feet, I just plain hurt. And I did it all to myself.

It was about two months ago that I made the discovery I had gradually, over the years, turned into a great big fat slimy wildebeest.

This discovery was made while I was attempting to pass a police obstacle course that includes running two 200-yard dashes, two sets of 20 pushups and sit-ups, going up and down a set of stairs six times, crawling through a culvert drain and dragging a 150-pound man 50 feet two separate times all of this in under 7 minutes and 20 seconds.

Needless to say, being a wildebeest, I did not pass. Everybody in my unit passed, but not the wildebeest.

So here I am, determined to whip my big wildebeest butt into shape.

And there was a time when it was in shape. When I graduated from the Charlotte Police Academy in the fall of 1988, I could run 8 miles in 80 minutes not that I wanted to, but that was a requirement to graduate in those days. I weighed 180 pounds at the time. To prepare the class to pass this requirement, we spent the preceding 16 weeks in arduous physical training every morning, Monday through Friday, rain or shine.

Our training started at 0715 hours sharp when we came to attention in military PT formation and began calisthenics at the command of the training sergeant. Two other training sergeants patrolled the ranks to ensure that all the various exercises were executed in proper military form. And rarely were they. Invariably, some fool would mess up, a sergeant would catch him, and wed have to start all over again.

And after we finished this nice little warm up, we ran. And ran, and ran, with all this running done with the class in military formation, running in perfect step and singing out cadences all the way. Failure to do any of the above resulted in the entire class spending a few quality moments together in what is commonly referred to as the "front leaning rest" position.

One cadence I still recall from those days was sung any time our formation passed any of the firefighter recruits who also trained on the grounds of the Charlotte Fire and Police Academy. As our formation approached, whoever was leading our cadence at the time would immediately sing out and the rest of us would sing back loudly this wonderful little refrain:

"Firemen, firemen, were in doubt, as to what it is that makes your belly stick out.
"Is it beer or is it wine, or is it the lack of PT time? "

All of this was naturally done in the spirit of good old fashioned interagency fun.

But now, 16 years later almost to the day, its my belly thats sticking out. And it isnt from beer or wine, but dang sure it is from lack of PT time.
But as R. Lee Ermey would say, I am definitely born again hard. 

Every day, rain or shine, I do at least 2 hours of workout in the gym, either at headquarters or in the one Ive built in my garage that would make Jack LaLanne proud. I also run at least 2 miles a day, and Im trying for 3.

Its not really what you would call running yet, though. Its more of a wildebeest shuffle at this point. Several weeks ago when I started this W.S. Melton Workout Program, a group of my buddies who build houses were putting the roof on a house theyre building on my street. As I passed by, several of the boys yelled "Faster, Bill, faster!" and hooted and hollered as I chugged on by, about to vomit or lose a lung.

But just wait and see. By Christmas of this year I intend to go from being a big fat slimy wildebeest to swelling up like a muscle bound tick. I made the mistake of using that analogy at headquarters a while back, so of course Im catching some grief about being The Tick.

Just this week one of the guys said, "Hey, Rocky, hows the workout going?" I was pretty pumped, thinking he meant Rocky Balboa or Rocky Marciano.

Nope, he said. He meant Rocky as in Mountain Spotted Fever.