APFT record failure

PVET

Future member of the Army Veterinary Corps
Joined
Jan 23, 2019
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I'm currently a female in Army ROTC on a 3 year scholarship. This is my first year and I have not contracted yet. I passed the first mock APFT in September with a 246. I'm decent at push-ups, excellent at sit ups, but my two mile run (usually around exactly 18 minutes) always scares me. Lately, I haven't been working as hard on running, but more on strength exercises focused on the new ACFT. The record APFT is coming up. I started running again, but noticed small things such as slight chest pain or side cramps. Am I worrying for nothing? What would happen if I did fail? Would the scholarship be affected?
 
Good Morning, Others can please comment about the scholarship impacts and guidance. I just wanted to recommend that your reported symptom of chest pain, even if only slight, be evaluated. Please don't mess around with that - please go get checked out. It may be nothing, but better to have an attending physician or PA possibly order an EKG (painless/ easy/ fast) to confirm normal sinus rhythm or a cardiac stress test to ensure everything is OK. Good luck.
 
I'm not a doctor. But, slight chest pain and side cramps are common side effects of not running. As a female and a slow runner, I suggest running everyday and working hard on your leg tucks (every other day).
 
I'm not a doctor. But, slight chest pain and side cramps are common side effects of not running. As a female and a slow runner, I suggest running everyday and working hard on your leg tucks (every other day).

^^THIS^^ As with most exercise, the more you run and the more you're willing to push thru the pain, the faster your times will get. If you run daily for 2-3 weeks, you'll get thru the uncomfortable part and two miles will be a walk in the park. My daughter was pushing the limits on the running portion of the testing but in less than a month, took 6 minutes off her time just by running every day.
 
The scholarship/contracting would only be affected if u fail it your first two times from when your scholarship is supposed to be activated. It would be at the BNs discretion to remove you from the program if you arent passing the APFT before your scholarship, but since you got a decent score on the mock I wouldn't be worried about any of that. Just keep running and if you dont want to do that, go swimming (increase lung capacity), go on a bike, just something cardio to get your time down.
 
Personally, I would avoid swimming, biking, etc. in lieu of running. There is no good substitute for running. Besides cross country and track at school, I do taekwondo. I find that if I am away from taekwondo for a couple of weeks, even though I have been running most days, I am out of shape, out of taekwondo shape. Running is no substitute for taekwondo sparring.

I would suggest mixing up your running with track interval days, e.g., 6x800m, tempo days, e.g., 2-3 miles uncomfortably fast, and long days, e.g., 5-6 miles easy.
 
Thank you everyone for the tips! I'll try and run everyday. Surprisingly I'm really good at leg tucks which is a plus.
 
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