Yes, it's true- it says so on my official boot camp dog tag that I received this morning upon completion of the month- "Adventure Boot Camp Survivor". So, I made it. It's been plenty rough. Getting up that early has literally been hell. And while I got a little more used to getting up early, I never quite got the hang of going to bed early. About the best I could do was falling asleep at around 10pm, which just meant I was getting less sleep. I missed a few days along the way. The bronchitis set me back a bit and there was one day where I slept straight through my alarm and two days that I had to go in to work early. However, despite the set-backs and misses, when we had our final fitness test today to assess our progress the results were awesome! My mile time dropped from 9 min. 7 sec. to 8 min. 39 sec. - pretty impressive considering the fact that I've been trying to run faster for years and just couldn't quite get over the hurdle of moving from jogging to running- this morning felt really good for once. My push-ups went from 25 (all done on my knees in modified position) to 44 (with the first 12 done on my toes and the next 32 done on my knees). I think that impressed me the most- my upper body strength was not so great coming in to this month. My mom actually noticed last weekend that it looked like a had more definition in my shoulders, so it seems that things are starting to look better, too. Then we had to do sit-ups. The instructor tells you to as many as you can, no time limit, but that once you hit 100, you can stop. My initial sit-up reps was 100 (as I commented to a friend- I have great abs and if I could only lose a little of the fat on top of them you could see how strong they are). But, for good measure, this morning I did 120. Probably could have done a few more, but I wanted to save some core strength for the final test. The plank hold. My initial time was 1 min. 3 sec. which I wasn't that happy with, so I really wanted to double that this time. I fought a valient fight against gravity and fell just short of my goal- I wound up holding it for 1 min. 56 sec. Not too shabby, but those few seconds just irk me. At least it's something I can work on as I move forward.
No, I'm not going to keep doing boot camp. While I enjoyed it, it's far too expensive for me to do every month. But, I definitely learned a lot of really good exercises that I can use in the future. I definitely know way more moves to strengthen my shoulders, biceps and triceps. We also learned lots of core exercises. While we did a lot of leg work, most of it revolved around various forms of lunges and having some sort of resistance while running- be it on the beach, up a hill, or on stairs. There were some moves that I will probably never do again, and a few things that we did with the hand weights that I think will be better at home using either my medicine ball or my kettlebell.
So, now the goal is to keep this up. I have to keep running as I'm just over a month away from the Lakefront Marathon. I pretty much just want to finish, but I would love it if I could finish in under 6 hours (which is what I ran my last full marathon in). Plus, I want to keep up with the weight training. Ideally, I could sleep in for an additional hour (meaning getting up at 5:30 versus 4:30am) and then have an hour to either do resistance training at home, or go for a short run each morning. I'm going to spend the next month focusing on running and resistance. Once the marathon is done, I'll go back to the cycling, and I would like to get back to some swimming as well. So, that's the plan. We'll see how well I do. Keep your fingers crossed!
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