Vacation
A lot has happened since December 17th, post-test day for our last boot camp. Two college graduations, Christmas, New Years, Sarah's birthday – that's quite a bit of celebrating to cram into two weeks off work! It's not rocket science to guess that I fell off the wagon a bit. My mom was gracious enough to buy me the bathroom scale I wanted for Christmas, despite her embarrassment and reluctance to give a scale as a gift. The holidays did some damage, as since Christmas I fluctuated between around 365 pounds depending on food and beer intake the previous couple days. At 365 lbs., the two weeks vacation made me gain back the few pounds I lost last month! Oh well, it's time to jump back on the horse and get back into it.
I reflected a little bit and realized how important structure and a routine are to my continued success. I spent most of my two weeks vacation in the Atlanta metro either at my family's or Sarah's house, but not at home. I was home so infrequently that I don't think I went grocery shopping once! Another routine buster was Sarah being in town from grad-school in Boston. I love her to death and we had a blast this holiday season together, but having a "guest" in town means that I wasn't doing a good job keeping to my newly learned Step It Up habits. Don't confuse me, that's not her fault in the least; I need to learn how to eat well outside of my apartment or work and make time for exercising.
Boot Camp v2
The great news is that Ryan is ready to whip me back into shape. I had my nice little sabbatical, but I'm ready to get back to work on my goals. We reported back to boot camp on Tuesday. This camp's pre-test results were expectedly a step backwards from my first post-test, but I am still better than my original pre-test!
Exercise | Pre-test | Goal |
Fifty-Fives (55s) | 10 | 12 |
Regular Pushups | 24 | 30 |
Assisted Pushups | ?? | TBD |
Regular Dips | ?? | TBD |
Assisted Dips | ?? | TBD |
Sit Ups (in 1 minute) | 22 | 30 |
Planks to failure | 55 sec | 1:15 |
What are Fifty-Fives and where did the Mile run go? We did not test the mile run because we were forced inside due to weather. Instead, we tested to see how many time's we could run across the width (from sideline to sideline, not baselines) of the basketball court in 60 seconds, named "55s". Ryan remarked that to make the Whitefield HS varsity basketball team you must make at least 16 (8 times down and back). I need Ryan to remind me what my scores were for those exercises labeled with question marks; I will update when I hear back.
After we got done with our pre-test, Ryan was delighted to learn we still had 15 minutes left. He introduced some exercises to the newbies and we moderate ab work. Never one to let a step go un-stepped on, we ran stadiums around the gym for some cardio to finish up. After 2 weeks of inactivity, those did not go over well. Ouch.
Wednesday was a little warmer - a balmy 35-40 degrees Fahrenheit – so we were out on the field. Even after 3 weeks of camp last month, this was my first non-test day outside. After our usual warm up, Ryan had us jog and sprint several distances to warm up our legs in the cool weather. First twenty yards. Then thirty. Then forty. I'm going to let you all in on a little secret: When you are the slowest runner on these "warm up" sprints, there's not a whole lot of recovery time between when you get to the line and Ryan tells everyone to go back the other direction. I was pretty fatigued by the time we were done. I guess that means I need to get myself in shape where I'm not always the slowest, right?
The first real workout day was definitely an attention grabber! We went heavy on our upper bodies, doing lots of pushups and dips. Throw in 30 yards of bear crawls with pushups every five yards and cap it all off with crunches and burpees/squats separated by 30 yard sprints, and you have a recipe for some tired campers. As hard as Wednesday was, it felt good to get back in the saddle again.
Thinking back to my first "first day", I'm already ahead of where I was then. It's tempting to look back on the holidays and get frustrated that I made poor choices that jeopardized my goals. I'm trying not to look at it that way. I prefer to think during my first boot camp that I took 2 steps forward. My vacation took me one step backwards, but I'm still one step ahead of where I was. My goals are still in front of me and I'm moving back in the right direction again.
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