Fitness fanatics can gather this Friday, September 9 at Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre for the 343 Challenge.

While fitness challenges are nothing new for the fitness facility, this one will certainly raise your heart rate while honouring those who protect us daily.

Jessie Jacobs, Fitness Supervisor and Personal Trainer says the challenge was created to pay respect to those individuals who risk their lives everyday.

"A lot of the members here are firemen, police officers, and emergency workers and we are honouring them for the month. We have three different workouts geared to each of those professions. And then on Friday we have an extreme bootcamp class starting at 9:30, so we are going to get our participants to go for roughly a 5km run outside, come back, and then at 10 o' clock, we're all going to meet at the soccer fields here."

Calgary Firefighter Jeremy Huolt and some of his colleagues will be putting the class through the challenge, beginning at 10 am. Two versions will be offered, one for the fitness maniac and the other a modified version.

"It will be roughly 100 pushups and then you have to run two laps around the track, and then you have to come down and do 100 burpees, run two laps around the track. Or we are going to have a modified version for a little bit easier."

Huolt shares while the workout may be grueling, it is only a hour of your time.

"It's more about what you can do, it's about finishing. It's not a race or anything; it's more to think about the 343 guys that died in 9/11 and remember that they will never be able to workout again, so we can give what we can."

Both Jacobs and Huolt agree that the challenge is not just in honour of fire services but for all emergency personnel who's lives can be over in the blink of an eye while just doing their jobs.

Of the 2977 victims of 9/11, 343 firefighters and 68 emergency service personnel lost their lives.