September 30, 2010 Lighter Than Air

Okay. I'm trying this again. I had this blog all finished and ready to publish last night and somehow it got accidentally erased. I saved the darn thing as I went along but when I tried to reopen it all I got was a picture. Hopefully I can remember some of what I wrote!

It was actually a beautiful early morning yesterday. The temperature was quite pleasant and I regretted the sweat pants I had worn. Our entire workout was at the hill. We began by walking across the field to where the hill began. Now I must admit I love horror movies. Not the grisly, gory, torture as entertainment kind of horror movies, but more the ghosts, supernatural, zombies kind of horror. And walking at the back of the group, across the field in the dark, with everyone just kind of silhouetted against the still moonlit sky, I told Sharon this looked just like a scene from Night of the Living Dead. "They're coming to get you Barbra!" Yikes!

After the warm-up we did the hill workout. We started by running up the hill for 20 seconds and then taking a minute to come back down. Then we did it again, trying to beat our distance. We did this a few times and then finished with a 25 second run. I felt really good during this. My legs felt strong and my breathing was all right. I beat my distance each time and came back down relatively quickly. My legs felt lighter than air. Just like Ramona the Pest when she ran around the playground. Also, I knew this would be the last hill workout with Dustin this outdoor boot camp season so all was good!

Once at the bottom of the hill we did an upper body workout. Some deltoid presses, bicep curls, and push-ups. We did this rotation twice, trying to do the push-ups where you explode off the ground and try to clap in between each one. I laughed though because my hands kept sticking to my mat! Made it kind of hard to get my hands off to clap and you come down really quickly.

We returned to the hill for our second go round. We ran up the hill for 10 seconds and then walked back down for 10 seconds. We would do this until we reached the fence at the top. As we got closer to the top, that 10 second walk certainly became much slower. At one point the people at the lower end of the group didn't have to walk back down while those at the higher end continued to walk down. Well, that was good and bad. The good was that I was in the group that had to continue walking. The bad was that I was in the group that continued walking!
After that we walked almost, but not quite, to the bottom of the hill. Now we ran for 5 seconds. Stopped. Then ran for another 5 seconds. Stopped. And on and on until we reached the top. I had a hard time just stopping. I had to shake my legs out or walk in place. It was hard for me to just stand still. Again, when we were done, I felt great. My legs still felt strong.

We continued our upper body workout with partners. We worked the deltoids more and did some partner pushups. At one point Sharon seemed to be applying more pressure on my wrists while I was doing deltoid work. I told her I was really starting to feel it and she said I would probably feel it still more since Dustin was helping her put the pressure on. Ouch!

For our last run up the hill, we had to carry our weights while we ran. That took the wind out of my sails. That was 40 lbs of extra weight I had to carry. I tried to run, even slowly, but I only made it about a third of the way up. I kept moving the weights around trying to find the position I could run best with but that would have been the position of weights on the ground so that wouldn't work. I walked for about the next third and then Dustin came over and encouraged me to run for 15 seconds. He counted it for me while I ran (if you could call it a run but I tried!) and I kept that pace back up to the fence. At one point I thought of just dropping one weight but I knew that I couldn't drop 20 lbs of weight that quickly in reality so I made myself continue to hold onto both. I asked myself what a 48 year old man, only 4 weeks away from being a 49 year old man was trying to prove. Nothing I told myself. I'm not proving anything. I'm just trying to stay in shape for my health, my kids, my life. Good enough reasons to keep on pushing.
However, when we finished my legs certainly didn't feel lighter than air or strong. They were beat!

Our last section was core work. It was getting increasingly foggy now. The mist was surrounding us. Who knows what could be in the mist. Could be unknown creatures or cursed pirates. I wasn't in possession of ill gotten gold so I knew i had nothing to worry about. Except for the core work. Managed to get through it though. The swimmers were the toughest for me for some reason. Oh well.

Now. One more outdoor boot camp this season and then we move indoors. From Dustin's description it should be fun and challenging. Very much looking forward to it!

Have a good one.

Roger