As Aberdeen firefighter and paramedic Brandon Johannsen raced to the finish line, his fellow co-workers urged him on.
"Come on kid," J.R. Huebner yelled as he looked at his stopwatch. "Come on. Push it. You can do it."
At the last stage of the combat training drill, Johannsen lifted the 150-pound dummy around his shoulders and dragged it the 90 or so feet, before nearly collapsing at the finish line.
"You just made everyone else look bad," Rob Senger said jokingly. "You should have went last."
Johannsen's time of 1:58 beat the previous best of 2:03 set by Joel McMaster and it also made him the only person to finish the drill, which was designed to measure fitness levels, in under two minutes.
"My legs feel like noodles right now," Johannsen said. "I hope someone beats me. That would be awesome."
Huebner, who serves as the department's peer fitness trainer when he's not going on ambulance calls or running to fires, administered the drill to all three fire department shifts this past month. Shift B was the last to finish on Friday.
Times and ages were recorded, but the drill was optional - although nearly all the department's 44 employees chose to participate.
"It's intense, hard work," Huebner said. "It's based on the Firefighter Combat Challenge which is sometimes shown on channels like ESPN. They call it the toughest two minutes in sports. Our drill isn't to scale, but it's close. The concepts are all the same."
To do the drill, the participant had to throw a hose over his shoulder, run up four flights of stairs, drop the hose, pull a rope with a donut roll attached to the end of it up through the window, run down four flights of stairs and out the door, stand on a sled and hit hit wood with an ax, drag a hose about 45 feet, spray water, run back and then drag the dummy to the finish line. They did it all while wearing about 65 pounds of gear.
Huebner said there wasn't such a thing as pass or fail. It was just a good chance for everyone to see where they stand when it comes to overall fitness.
"All these things we did in the drill encompass the type of work we may see on the fire ground," he said. "We're trying to promote health and wellness."
While Huebner said he expected the average time to be around 2:30, Senger joked that he hoped to make it to the end alive.
"If I'm under five minutes, I'll be happy," he said. "If I finish, I'll be happy."
Senger finished well under three minutes, but the drill drained him - as well as everyone else that participated. Ten minutes later, he had his boots off, his feet up and he laid just feet from where he finished.
"I suppose I could try to stand now," he said.
Lt. Tim Medenwald said the hardest part of the drill was dragging the dummy.
"You're at the end and your legs are already shot," he said. "You can't take big steps because you're so tired. You have to take little tiny, baby steps."
Throughout the drill, Huebner urged everyone to take their time and not to overdo it.
"Whatever you do, don't hurt yourself," he said.
Senger, the president of the firefighters union, said it's important for the department to have someone who's willing to work on fitness.
"We really want to thank J.R.," he said. "All this is so important. It's a really good thing that we have our own peer fitness trainer."
Distributed by the Associated Press
