Triathlons and other competitions are great experiences especially with your great attitude..just finishing! Meeting people of a like mind is a benefit also. Free weights are a great investment (especially if they're steel and not plastic). Bicycling is the way to go as well! You have a great workout ethic, healthy body healthy mind..
Regarding what I did in the Legion, there were many others that were better, stronger and faster but I was a strong average. I would weight train, jog and swim after hours on my own whenever possible just to work for that extra edge. In Kourou, I would jog to the beach then swim out 4 km around the first bouy (maybe the second one..I forgot) then swim back. Factoring in the currents and the tide, the whole swim was a wide 8 km loop. In Corsica, at a chalet called Vergio I would jog up the small highway for 15 km and back down (like Kip Kano, a Kenyan, used to do ..he would train by running up the side of a mountain for seven miles). At the time I didn't realize I was creating micro-fractures in my achilles tendons and painful nodules started to form for months afterwards but they did go away eventually. Like everyone, I found certain things very hard and challenging..and in many cases you didn't get second chance so you had to give everything you had up to and including passing out for any number of reasons. Not only did I try to prepare for going "all out" but for certain activities I did so and I needed some recovery time afterwards. For example, I could barely walk sometimes, other times I would "zone out" or fall asleep while doing something due to exhaustion.. but only briefly because you had to keep going..injuries were something else and so was disease or other ailments that brought you to your knees. Anything less than that you could cope with easily but for this other stuff you had to dig deep. When going through jump school in Corsica after coming back from Guyane, I had a bout of malaria and something else (some sort of microbial fungus in the lungs) that should have killed me. I had to haul myself hand by hand up a railing going up a small stairwell, sweat rivers at night..etc.. In any case I did all the "fun runs" and everything else and got my wings. When they were deciding which company I was going to, like everyone else, you get checked out. I was put in the hospital for about a week..without any real explanation. After that, mountain combat with a trip to Djibouti. Long story short, some things were hard and others were just nasty..corvee quartier pour les megots..blechh.
Came back to the site to add this, here is a bit of current news from that part of the world:
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/...ope-arrives-in-french-guiana-after-sea-voyage
Interesting stuff!