Emily Jones will be a Guest Blogger during our 8 Week Go Commando Race Training Program that prepares individuals to run a 5K, 10K or Half-Marathon. The program will consist of 2x a week of the Nationally Recognized Boot Camp Challenge workouts in addition to group runs on Saturday mornings.
Emily will be participating in the 10K on October 18th and sharing her workout and training experience here.
Week 3 Blog
Week 3 of the 8 week Boot Camp Challenge is over, which means there’s only 5 weeks until Go Commando! I’m trusting the process, but can’t help but wonder if I’ll be ready???
Tuesday was a fairly typical day at Boot Camp. Meaning, it was hot! Fortunately, none of the workouts are typical with Courtney at Boot Camp. You never know what to expect, it’s never the same workout twice, and there’s just no way to prepare for which muscles will be sore this week. And can we talk about her vehicle for a moment? Rolling gym with dumbbells, mats, sand bags, exercise bands, calipers, tape measure, and more. She’s equipped to lead a class anywhere & everywhere. It’s impressive.
Today, we created six stations with a different exercise at each station, plus an ab exercise, and rotated through the stations. We also turned in our food journals and those that haven’t been journaling had to do 25 burpees instead. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that food journaling just moved way up on my list of priorities. Burpees are evil!
Thursday was fall weather at its finest and such a welcome relief. We began the class by running a 1 lap warm-up and as we were finishing the lap, Courtney tells us we have 4 more. We are running a mile for time and we’re already 1 lap in. Where’s the relief in that? I finish my mile, but not before getting lapped by some super-fast boot campers, which was awesome. May as well leave some room for improvement though, right? Improvement = rewards and I think I’ve mentioned that I’m a fan.
After the mile race, I was introduced to Ab Survivor. To date, my abs have just been trying to survive two C-sections, but we took it up a notch today. Ab Survivor was a rotation of 25 reps of whatever ab exercise Courtney yelled out, mountain climbers for 30 seconds, and then a 1 minute plank. Rinse and repeat for the duration of the class. If one person quits, the whole class starts over. I am not about to have the others throwing sandbags at me, so I “survive” and then collapse into a puddle of sweat at the end. It was a lovely sight.
There were several boot campers with recent birthdays and we celebrated at the end by singing to them while they did push-ups. I have never been so happy in my life to have a February birthday.
On Friday, the half marathon running coach reached out to see if I could meet at 6:30am on Saturday instead of 7:30am. Sure, I’m agreeable. I’m also pretty sure she decided that I needed the extra hour to finish the route at the same time the 7:30 group would finish, but whatever. I meet her and one other boot camper at 6:30 on Saturday for a 5 mile run. The route for the day takes us out of Liberty Park for the first time to Zinc Plant Rd & River Rd. The route is part of the Go Commando route and Brandy wanted to prepare us for the hills. I have nothing nice to say about the hills. It was brutal and I never got my head in the zone, but I ran the 5 miles and high-fived the 7:30am group as they were starting and not as they were finishing. Whew.
Another boot camper, who has lost 100 pounds (amazing!), and I walked to cool down afterwards. I loved hearing her success story. Such an inspiration!
Next week marks the halfway point of this 8 week session and I’m already so thankful for what I’ve learned, the new people I’ve met, the progress made, and energy gained.