July 14, 2010 Playground Workout, Revisited

Yes I did my Happy Dance today. A really tough, challenging workout and I didn't have to run the hill! Plus, we did this great workout and I finished with dry feet! Awesome.

We did the playground workout today which was the same workout we did on my first day of fitness boot camp. It was really a nice way to gauge the progress I have made so far. I know I have made progress in terms of weight because my clothes that were tighter at the beginning of the summer now not only fit but are becoming loose and too big. That is real incentive, I tell you. But I wanted to see what kind of progress I have made physically.

We did many, but not all, of the same stations. And I am so happy to report that I did better on all of them than I did the first time. The pull ups are still difficult and I still did the modified version, but I did more of them and held myself up longer than I did previously. These pull ups, by the way are done on the rings from the swing set. I keep adding to my tricep dips off the park benches and did pretty well on the side planks with the twists while holding a weight. I really like how Dustin announces how much time is left for each exercise so that just when I feel like I can't possibly do more, I hear how many seconds are left and realize that I can. Honestly, I sometimes still have to break for a second but I still keep trying to push myself to get back up and do more.

There seemed to be many stations today. It was exhausting but really gave for a well rounded workout. We also had to sprint around the tennis court between our first and second circuits. Dustin told me I could run faster and, you know, he was right. I pushed myself to go faster. It was hard because of the problem I've been having with my achilles tendon, but I've added some support in my shoe and it seems to be making a real difference. So Dustin continues to personally challenge me which is what I said I really needed.

The people in fit camp are very inspirational. Everybody seems to be at a different level and yet we are all jointly working toward the same goals. People are so encouraging to each other, accepting of the challenges we all face and there is no spirit of competition. I think that is why I've always preferred groups exercise. There is such a spirit of camaraderie that exists among the members. Fit camp has been such a great addition to my summer so far. The only downside is that it has made my summer break go too fast!

Roger

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

July 10, 2010 Missed Friday :(

Okay. Didn't go to fitness boot camp on Friday. Hate making excuses, should have gone. But here is my excuse. I still have that sore area around my achilles tendon. I think that's part of the soleus but unsure. Anyways, looked up that injury online and it said to ice it and let it rest. I haven't been letting it rest so I thought I better before it gets worse and I can't go to boot camp at all. So just took it easy on the foot.

I did get a different kind of workout though. Yard work. Spent a couple of hours weeding and clearing up all the sides of the house as well as lugging branches and other debris from the tree that had been sawed off. We used some kind of Cutter's Backyard Bug Killer stuff that really took care of the mosquitoes. It was awesome! We had not even been able to step outside without getting eaten alive and this let us spend almost the whole day outside, back or front yard without bug spray. Even better, Brenna, my daughter, sprayed the Cutter's. When she heard we were going to try it she said "I want to spray it", so we let her. She said the mosquitoes tried to get her when she was doing it but it worked pretty quickly. So now, at least for a couple weeks, we can go outside into the yard again. It's supposed to work for 6 weeks, but as bad as the bugs have been, we're going to spray again in two.

So, tomorrow a regular workout at the Princeton Club. I'll do some weight training because it is either weight training or weight gaining, and just ride the stationary bike. The bike is real impact and feels better on the heel.

On a final note, saw Despicable Me today with Brenna and Elijah. It was very good and quite funny. IT'S SO FLUFFY! We saw it in 2-D so have no idea whether or not the 3-D is any good.

Have a nice weekend.

Roger

July 7, 2010 Humid and Buggy

First let me say I hate mosquitoes. Hate them, hate them, hate them. Unfortunately they seem to love me. This morning was again very humid but for the first time (for me anyways) the darn mosquitoes really seemed to be out. I stopped a few times to either try to swat them away or to itch. As much as I don't like doing it I'm going to have to start wearing some insect repellent in the morning, just in case.

Today was another killer day on the hill. We first ran up the hill for about 20 seconds, dropped our cone, and then came back down. After that the amount of time was changed and we were supposed to try to reach or pass our cone. Finally we took a few turns running up the hill backwards. Man does that work the quads! By the way, this boot camp is really working the quads. I cannot believe how toned they are getting and they really didn't seem in bad shape before.

We returned to the shelter for our strength training. We worked in groups of three. We did one station for abs, one station weights, and one station cardio. We did things like side planks with a twist, swimmers, alternating deltoid presses, squat thrusts, rows, and more. When you are watching these things, it really doesn't look too hard. When you actually do them, with the addition of the energy you just expended on the hill, it is really hard. Then we had to sprint one last time over to the fence by the hill and back. I was tired but I made it all the way there and back without walking. Yay for me! We were done. I thought. Nope. Now we had to partner up for some push downs for the abs and some partner push ups. I had to bed my knees a bit for the push downs because my back was bugging me (how appropriate) some and by the time we got to the push ups I just did what I could. Again, though, I feel like I left everything I had out there. But then there was some more. We had to do some one legged hip lifts. That however really was the end.

We finished in a circle where people shared their successes so far. It was really impressive to hear what people are accomplishing. I'm surprised that I've been able to get myself up and there. People who know me know that I am not a morning person (unless getting up to go to a football game in Ann Arbor) so this is quite the feat. And I'm enjoying it too. It has been a great way to start off the day. Oooh but on Friday, Ryan.

Roger

July 5, 2010 Man Was I Stinky!

Oh my gosh! That was a workout this morning. My arms were a little shaky when I left for home. It was great. My shirt was pretty much drenched and I even cut right through my deodorant! Poor Sharon, we drove home with the windows open so the breeze probably didn't make things too pleasant. She had no problem with me taking my shower first.

Back to the workout. It was raining on and off this morning and pretty humid. Traffic was almost nonexistent since this is the end of the holiday weekend. When we arrived, I thought maybe we didn't read that camp was canceled due to the weather because there weren't any other cars there. Then someone else pulled up, and then someone else so all was good. There were only 6 of us in class today, probably due to the 4th of July but that was good. 6 people and 2 instructors meant plenty of individual attention. We did a circuit today in the shelter. No hill. We weren't going to have to run in that soaking wet grass which I really appreciated. There were several stations. We had to do russian twists while passing the medicine ball off, leg lifts with a roundhouse lift, push-ups with a side lift, rows using the tubes, squats with a lift using dumbbells, dumbbell lunges, side to side hops touching a cone on each side, wall sits with a medicine ball chest press, a squat jump throwing up the medicine ball as high as we could, some high knee lift jogs in place, and some squat thrusts. Yikes. And we had to do this circuit 3 times!

I was so surprised that I could do the push-ups with the fly twist. I wasn't able to do it before when I tried. Woo hoo making progress! The other stuff I was pretty familiar with so it was more of a matter of just pushing myself to do the most I could. That can be very difficult but I make myself go until I really need to rest.Then I try to make myself go again as soon as I can. It's getting better. After the stations I thought we were done but we had to do more. We ran in place with high knees while holding the medicine ball over our head. My knees weren't terribly high but they were as high as they were going to go. I laughed because I had just told my group that I couldn't get my knees any higher when Dustin called over to me to get my knees higher. Next we got to take the medicine ball and slam it into the ground as hard as we could. That was fun. At the next station we did bicycles and then front planks. I thought I was doing pretty well on the front plank until I realized I wasn't on my forearms but still on my hands. Had to quick drop onto my forearms. Whew! Finally finished. Nope. Had to run one sprint around the parking lot and then we were finished. With the humidity and all this turned out to be a really intense workout but, as I stated before, it was great!

Oh, yeah, did manage to lose another pound but, more importantly, I notice the change in the way my clothes fit. It still wouldn't be noticeable to anyone else but I can tell. Things are going in the right direction!

Roger

July 2, 2010

The hill! The hill! What a workout! Our cardio portion of boot camp took place on the hill. Well I wanted a challenge. This was really meeting it head on. We warmed up first with a jog to the hill and then running around the garbage cans that were set out for the fireworks at Elver Park. Sharon said something to me that I can't remember but for some reason it made me think of a line from Golden Girls. It was the episode where Rose wants Miles to be more exciting. She signs them up for skydiving. She liked the idea of dropping down towards the field, watching the cows grow larger and larger. Miles asks her if he can't just run towards her and Moo? Guess you had to be there but that really cracked me up.

Anyways, back to class. We started by running up the hill for 30 seconds and then resting 15. The we would do it again. I didn't mind this because, surprisingly, I did pretty well. By the time we finished I almost made it to the top. Then we jogged back down. Next we did the same thing but for a shorter time. 15 and 5. The problem for me was that I couldn't just stop. I had to slow to a walk and then stop, but by the time I stopped we were running again. Still I got pretty high on the hill, which didn't seem so great since we were supposed to jog back down again. My jog became a walk back down. I was glad to see so many other campers had the same definition of jog. Next we shuffled sideways up the hill, switching sides when Dustin yelled "Switch" (as if you couldn't figure that out). Then the jog (walk) back down. One final exercise. We had to run to the top of the hill and down, and then back to the shelter for water. This was really hard now! I went as far as I could, but finally had to walk part of the way. It was interesting to me that it usually is my quads that get tired and make me start to walk but they were up to the challenge. This time it was my hamstrings that got the best of me. Maybe that is a sign of progress that my quads are getting stronger. Sharon, of course, with her great endurance jogged the whole way! She says that her jog is her sprint.

We moved next to the strength training. We had to grab out mats and some weights. Since the weights were for abs ( I thought) we just used Sharon's 10 lbs. We were in partners with 1partner using the mat and the other doing calf raises. Sharon insisted on doing the mat first so I did the calf raises. Anybody actually believe that? We did sixty calf raises, 10 slow and then 10 fast. I don't do this one very frequently so my calves burned pretty easily but I managed it. With the mat we did a crunch up, weights held against our shoulders and then pressed up with the weights once we reached the top of the crunch. Unfortunately I couldn't crunch all the way up. So once I got in the up position I stayed there for the presses :( but the next time we went through the rotation and I was on crunches again I was able to do it better. I was trying to keep my heels on the ground and we were supposed to have them off the ground. Dang I guess I didn't listen very well. But I got it better the second time.

We finished with core strengthening exercises. Seated russian twists, swimmers, and finally a front plank. By the time we got to the 90 second front plank I had nothing left. But I didn't give up. Mind over muscle. I held it as long as I could, dropped down for a second and then made myself get back up. Even if I couldn't hold it long I kept getting back up. That was a really looong 90 seconds!

On the ride home Sharon and I talked about how much we are enjoying camp. It is motivating, challenging and everyone is so nice and supportive. We also realize that in this economy money is tight for everyone, but the money spent on this boot camp has been worth every penny!

Have a great and safe 4th of July!

Roger

Thursday, July 1, 2010

As stated before, Wednesday was an exhausting day. It actually all started Monday night.

A few weeks ago I took a class on Elluminate, which was basically a tool that could be used for creating virtual classrooms. The Madison School District was offering this class to teachers interested in using technology and those trained would receive a certificate that would allow them to train other teachers. Upon completion of the course it was expected that you fulfill other outside requirements. One of these requirements was to prepare a lesson that was to include various components. No problem. You would then present this lesson, online, to the instructor. A virtual observation. No problem again. I preplanned what I would do and stored it in my memory bank, figuring I would put this together a couple days before my observation as it really didn't seem that complicated. That is, unless, something goes wrong with your computer. Which, of course is what happened. I sat down to put all my ideas together Monday night. Unfortunately, I couldn't access the internet which is where my virtual classroom was located. Usually it comes back up, so I waited but when it didn't come back I decided I better check to see what was the matter. Well, turns out the router was shot. Would not power up at all. And it was too late to go pick up another one. Okay, still, not a big problem. I would just pick one up Tuesday, reinstall it, and finish my project. Not that simple after all. We had an appointment for my son in McFarland that lasted an hour and a half. Then we had to take him to Stoughton for camp. It was already noon by then and we had to pick up my daughter. We went home, had lunch, relaxed for about a half hour and then went to get the router. They really are not that hard to install. Unless, you have a really old desktop that takes about 45 minutes to boot up. I tried first installing it on one of the laptops but kept receiving errors on both. Then I tried installing it on the desk top. It said a file was missing. I clicked on the ok button and it totally shut down the computer. After 45 minutes of waiting for it to boot up and access my CD drive, it shut it down again! Now what? Okay, still not too panicked, I would just go out and pick up and external Ethernet adapter. No luck. Nobody had one. They could order it for me online but I did not have time for that. So I ate my dinner and went to the other side of town (after picking up my daughter from driver's training), but still no luck. Then I realize there is the option of installing without the CD by using the Internet options. Ok. So back to the old Dell desktop, another 45 minutes for booting up, and finally accessing the Internet. Then a long, long setup as the computer took forever to load each necessary page. To make a long story short, still did not work. I worked until 11:00 pm switching cables and adjusting settings, returning to the internet set up until finally it worked. But, now, it is 11:00 pm, I haven't started my assignment, and my observation is scheduled for 10:00 am the next morning. So I stayed up until 1:00 am getting it as ready as I could and hoping for the best.

4:45 am came really early! Off to boot camp. Dustin was our leader today. We did the picnic table workout. We were in groups of 5 and lifted the picnic table over our heads and carried it to a designated cone. Then we set it down, did 10 pushups, 10 tricep dips, and carried the picnic table back to our starting point. I laughed to myself as I thought, "This must be what the Hebrews in The Ten Commandments must have felt like when they carried Nefretiri's barge to the mudpits to see Moses!" We did jumping jacks then until it was our turn to do the circuit. To be honest, I was still so tired from the previous night that I can't remember what was all in the circuit. We did some lunges with overhead dumbell presses, we did some rows, and some other strength training exercises. Dustin kept us motivated so I didn't just go through the motions, I gave it wall I had. After we carried the picnic table a couple of times and did the circuit a couple of times, we focused on more core exercises. We used the weights and did V ups, russian twists, and various types of planks. It was a good, intense workout. It amazes me that we do so much that it never seems like it is early in the morning. We are just up and going and not thinking about the time of the day it is. However, again, I'm always glad to see those six-fifteen people arriving.

After class, went home and got the boy child ready for camp again. Dropped him off and went straight to school for my virtual observation. I could have done it at home but was not willing to take the chance that something would happen again with the router. I arrived at school early so that I had about an hour and a half to refine and test my presentation. The observation went well, the teacher actually said she was impressed with my lesson and now that part is done. I still have an online quiz to do but it is open book so shouldn't be too bad. Of course, I'll probably wait until the last minute to do that too!