Boot Camp: Day 11

Was today exercise? Didn't feel like it!

It was raining as I drove out this morning, so I headed to the gymnasium. Thank goodness it rained when it did: I didn't want a downpour in the middle of training.

We did 4 easy laps around the gym. I'm pretty sure I wasn't at the end of the pack, but I was somehow the last person running: when I arrived back to my water bottle on the side lines, I expected others to encroach behind me, but no one was there. Maybe I ran 5 laps? Ha....I'd like to think maybe I'm that fast (never mind that Tammy, The Fast One, did actually lap me. Oh well!)

Our first task was a frisbee game. No, not Ultimate, though maybe it would've been more challenging. The objective was to run/jog/whatever around the gym and someone would throw a frisbee to you (there were about 4-5 going at any given time). If you fumbled it then you would have to throw it back out to someone else, then get down and do 5 pushups! There were a show of hands of who and who cannot throw a frisbee. A majority of us couldn't. Apparently I was one who could (who knew?) I got to throw a frisbee probably about a dozen times or so, maybe more, and not once did the other person fumble it (this could also be due to them being an awesome catcher, but again, I like to think I had some skill - !) I did try not to throw it from a great distance, for surely some of my throws would have hit the ground. And neither did I fumble the frisbees that were thrown to me (thank goodness!). I didn't want anyone to avoid receiving a throw from me simply because I suck! I think we were running around for almost 10 minutes, or so it seemed like, before the whistle blew. I wonder if anyone else was lucky enough to not do any pushups.

Then we had our hand weights out, and five people donated their mats. We formed a large circle, placing our hand weights crossed and at our feet. While we were doing jumping jacks, T'ai lined the 5 mats in the middle of the circle, and randomly grabbed several of our weights and placed them aside. Our next exercise: Musical Barbells (the best-suited title I can think of). Essentially, we would run clockwise or counterclockwise around the circle and when the whistle blew, we would have to stand in front of a set of weights on the floor. The lucky 5 without barbells would do "special" exercises in the middle. So while the outside folks were doing a combination of lunges, squats, bicep curls, the inside folks were doing The Plank, crunches, Bicycles, pushups....basically ab exercises.

I lucked out for most of the game until luck ran out. Of course the toughest exercise yet was mine to tackle: the 8-Count Body Builder. While standing at the foot of the mat, count with me:

One - clasp your hands together.
Two - squat to the floor and crawl forward with your hands
Three & Four - do a pushup (down, then up)
Five - Spread legs out
Six - Spread legs in
Seven - Crawl back to standing
Eight - Jumping Jack

Repeat.

OMG!

I guess that made up for the lack of pushups during the frisbee exercise! I would have pushed myself even more, had it not been for the break I took to wipe my face because I didn't want to drip on Liz' mat I was using. That wouldn't have been very pretty.

To top it all off, I actually ended up losing the next round too and ended up doing eccentric pushups: Up for one count, down for 5 counts, repeat. Despite my tiredness, my form wasn't too bad.

Today was fun. My ankles are a little sore from the side to side movement while running in a circle, but otherwise I still count my blessings for an injury-free camp!