July 12, 2010 Morning Dew

Have you ever read poetry about the beauty of the morning dew? It is so beautiful. It is nature's tears. Like little crystals from heaven...blah, blah, blah? All I can say is try running through it in your athletic shoes and socks, at 5:30 in the morning. It's not so great! Your feet squish around in your shoes until you can finally get those shoes and socks off. Yuck. Oh, well, back to the beginning.

It was actually a really nice day for working out outside today. The temperature was comfortable and humidity was low. Ryan was our instructor. Things started out great. We went for our warm-up jog in the parking lot. Cool. Dry feet. We did some other things like jumping jacks and walking lunges to get the cardio going.

Our circuit was really effective. Lots for the quads but other stuff too. Squats with shoulder presses, wall sits, jumping rope, rows using the tubing, and tricep dips were just some of our stations. Then we had a water break and I was ready to go through the circuit again but, yikes, we weren't doing it again. Time for the hill! Now we got to run through that wet grass, getting our feet nice and wet. Oh well, I guess they won't get overly sweaty. Then we had 5 minutes to run up and down the hill as many times as we could. We didn't have to get all the way to the top, just to where the hill plateaued. This was much further than I thought. I kept saying to myself, "I thought we didn't have to go all the way to the top" but it sure seemed like it. Unfortunately, up to this point my sore achilles area had felt pretty good but for some reason the motion my foot goes through when running upwards really bothers me. It does the same thing when I climb stairs. So I didn't do as well as I hoped, only made it up and down twice but at least I did it.

Then we went back to the shelter for another water break and a different circuit. Just two stations this time. One legged leg dips off the picnic benches at one station, planks and seated russian twists at the other. My russian twists went well and I was able to keep my feet off the ground the whole time with no back pain. Yay. More progress. The leg dips were a little scary because my darn wet shoe kept slipping. But I got through it without falling.

Another water break and then two more stations. More wall sits (ouch!) and some little hops back and forth while in a squat position. Burning quads now! Then another water break and, Ryan said, one last thing. Thank goodness. These 45 minutes go really fast but they are hard. Anyways, the one last thing was partner push ups. We did our fifteen and I jumped up full of energy because we were done for the day. Oops, wasn't really the last thing after all and my energy was zapped from my body. Still the last thing was jumping jacks again and I was able to do them for the required amount of time. Now it was really thank goodness. Great workout but poor Sharon had to put up with my stinkiness again because these workouts eat right through the deoderant. And some very nice soul lent me some "Off" which was so kind because those mosquitoes continue to love me.

Dustin will be back on Wednesday and I'm sure he'll put us through our paces. Looking forward to it.

Roger