Archive for February, 2010

Super Sunday!  Well, I took Saturday off this weekend instead of my usual Sunday.  So, today was spent doing all the things that I should have done yesterday!

I headed to the gym today a little before 1pm to do my “Saturday routine”.  Today I did 30 minutes on the treadmill with a 10 minute run and then another 30 minutes on the elliptical with the “strength program” option selected.

It was a nice afternoon and the gym was fairly empty.  I really like it.  As much as I like people and even like to people watch from time to time, I really liked the empty gym!

Well, I’m off to babysit “The Brothers” for a few hours.  I just love those twins

I am so sick of being sick!  Its way too expensive too…I’m almost afraid to add it up.  In less than 2 weeks I’ve been to the doctor 6 times and each time I had to pay a co-pay (3 visits it was $35/each and the other 3 it was $20/each) and lastly I’ve now had 3 prescriptions.  Why can’t my Rx’s be the $4 or $5 ones?  One was $35, another was $40 and the last one was $5!  What is really sad is that this is WITH insurance.  Can you imagine how expensive it would be without insurance?  I’m just ready to be done with this sickness and stuff.

On a related note, today I went to the eye doctor and everything looks good.  I am cleared to wear my contacts full time again.  He said I can still take the steroid drops before bed  for a couple more days but after that I’m good to go.

The family doctor gave me a Rx for upper respiratory and a sinus infection.  This winter has been pretty wet and fairly warm which means that mold is starting to grow earlier than normal.  So its almost like allergies are going to hit earlier this year … yuck!  So hopefully after the 10 days of antibiotic I will be back to normal.  The sinus pressure is making my ears hurt!

Now back to my day of fitness and workouts!  Boot camp was good and I did all the activities without feeling like I was going to DIE.  Its a nice change and I guess that means that I’m getting stronger.  Here’s what we did:  we got a chair and put one foot on it an then did lunges.  It really worked the glutes because one foot was up higher.  There were 10 on each leg and then we moved to jumping sideways and into a burpee push up.  We jumped from side to side and did a total of 10 burpees – so 5 on each side.  Lastly we did 20 tailbone lifts – feet straight up and lifting my hips off the mat.  These were alternated with a crunch…feet were still straight up in the air so it uses the upper abs.  We did 5 rounds of these and then did some core work.  Both sideways planks as well as full planks.  I think I found a new favorite…hip dips!  Its in an elbow plank position and you go from side to side and touch your hips on the mat.  It keeps me moving and not so focused on holding the plank.

This afternoon brought a good training session with Kevin.  Fridays always bring new things and they really kick my butt!  I started with my 10 minute run and succeeded    After a couple walking laps to cool down we did a couple circuits.  The first was 15 pull ups on the assisted pull up machine.  Basically it makes it feel like I’m only pulling half my body weight.  Then it was 15 knee ups in the Roman Chair.  A 30 second wall sit.  A hanging tricep hold for 15 seconds and lastly 20 alternating lunges.  The lunges might have been the most difficult of this circuit because I had to get each knee to the ground!  I did these 3 times each and we moved on.

The next mini circuit was two 15 lb dumbbells into a clean and press – 15 times each.  Followed by a sitting curl – still with 15 dumbbells in each hand.  Again, I did 3 sets of each.  Lastly we moved to the treadmill.  Here I did the shuffles on each side.  It was 20 seconds on the left, then 20 seconds walking to the front and lastly 20 seconds to the right.  I did this straight for 5 minutes and lastly came another RUN!  I about lost it when he told me he wanted to do a run.  I was exhausted and not quite sure if my legs would cooperate.  The first minute was killer and I jumped off for a break.  He made me get back on and I did another 90 seconds.  Of course I jumped off again because I was dying.  This is when he went hardcore on me and told me not to quit on myself.  Its amazing how his words remind me why I’m really doing this.  It all pays off when I weigh-in on Wednesday mornings.  And a good weigh-in makes me HAPPY!  When it was all said and done, I ran for another 5 minutes.  I would have never guessed that my body had the energy to do another 5 minute run after my workout.  It definitely makes for a hard workout and sends me into the weekend feeling nice and sore!

After the challenge of week 2, Kevin changed the workout regimends.  One of the biggest changes to my schedule was NO BOOT CAMP on Thursdays.  I’m not sure how long this change will last…I’m prepared for anything…but in the mean time it was nice to sleep in this morning.

I did wake up with something horrible going on in the “upper respiratory” area   Why can’t I stay healthy for longer than a week?  UGH!  It feels like my sinuses are draining and then I have a raspy cough too.  I even feel it in my ears.  Is it possible to have an ear infection at 29?  Could it be a side-effect caused by the steroid eye drops?  Either way, its more obnoxious than anything.  I decided to get on this early and scheduled a doctors appointment for tomorrow at 11am.  I need to find out what it is and quick!

My little sister came home from college for a few hours, she had a doctors appointment this afternoon.  We got to have lunch together and it was fun!  It was difficutlt to stick with the diet requirements but I did good.  At the first sign of feeling “full” I pust my plate to the other side of the table.  It was yummy to have something good to eat and keep within my guidelines for myself.  Eating out will not go away permenantly and even after I get to my goal weight, I need to know that I’ll be ok.  I can do it and not go off the deep end! 

After a little rest and letting lunch digest a bit…I headed to the gym.  Now you might be wondering how I did with running today and I’m happy to report that I DID IT!  I finally completed the entire run and not only did I do 10 minutes, I pushed myself to do 11 minutes.  I was so excited.  I really felt like I accomplished something.  So proud!  Then it was off to the StairMaster.  Today was “side, front, side, front and side again”.  Basically I walk up the stairs sideways and then to the front and then to the other side.  Its not a quick pace but it was consistent for an entire 10 minutes.  I’m still amazed at how high my heart rate gets when I am on this crazy machine.  I tried not to watch the monitor too much but the couple times I did look, it was well over 186 beats per minute.  Anyway, after that I headed to the ARC machine – - which is like an elliptical but more closely mimics the movements of walking up stairs, but with no impact!  I did 30 minutes on the ARC but the last 15 minutes Kevin was walking by and turned on the “program option”.  He chose the STRENGTH option and then challenged me to have over 85 strides per minute.  It was doable when the resistance was at 30 but every minute it would jump to 75 for about 15 seconds and then it got really tough. 

All in all, today was a GOOD day of fitness!  I hope that these days continue and that the scale continues to reflect my hard work.