0-5K and Beyond

Welcome to everyone reading this blog about my journey to become a runner. I will be training with The American Boot Camp Company over the next year and running in tons of races. Come train with me or join me in my next race! Let's get moving!
- "Boot Camp Hunter"

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

"Go Speed Racer Go": 5/13/08

I'm getting faster. We ran a timed mile on Monday morning and I finished it in 7:39. I couldn't believe it! Officially, I have taken over 7:00 off of my original mile time back in October. Can you believe it? My first mile time was 14:42, and now it's taking me 7:39 to run the same distance! My best time before that had been 7:53, and I really had to push myself hard to make that time. Monday's run seemed easier, and yet, my time was much faster. While running, I didn't feel like I was really straining myself too terribly much. I guess it's the additional weight loss as well as the everyday training that's adding to my increased speediness...

Speaking of speed, we had an old speedster show up this morning at boot camp. John came out today for the first time in a couple of months. He's been doing boot camp for awhile now, but has not been able to do it the past couple of months. He's always been fast and can run a consistent 6:30 mile or so. He was very surprised at how fast I have gotten when it comes to sprinting. There were a couple of times when I beat him when we were sprinting. Granted, I started out in front of him, but he never did catch me. It felt good to hear him comment about my speed. I might have gotten lucky by beating John in a couple of sprints this morning, but I am totally confident that he would wax me in any distance race. Maybe I could take him one day...

I ran the Big Peach 5K a couple of weeks ago. Finished it in 26:51! I was aiming to beat 27:00, and I did it! This was a huge boost considering that my finish time for the last race, the Sprint for Cancer 10K, was actually slower than my previous time. I've been pushing myself hard between each race so that I can continue to shave time off. The American Boot Camp Company helped sponsor the race and we had a large number of campers from different locations around town show up in Brookhaven for the race. I also saw quite a few friends of mine at the race as well. My buddy JJ ran the race with me. We started the race together; then I got out in front of him; then he passed me; then I caught back up with him. We finally finished the race together as we sprinted in to the finish line.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

April ends and May begins: 5/1/08

We finished the April boot camp session last Friday. My mile time was 8:23. That's 30 seconds slower than my previous run. I was really disappointed with my effort. I must admit, I really wasn't pushing myself as hard as I could. I got into a comfortable pace from the beginning and gradually slowed down during the run. It's not the end of the world, though. I did improve on the number of push-ups and sit-ups that I can do in a minute. I did 61 push-ups and 37 sit-ups on Friday. This has been one of the tougher tests throughout this boot camp experience.

On Saturday, we held a boot camp session at Atlantic Station. We didn't start until 7:30 am, so it was nice to be able to sleep in a little bit. Plus, it was weird doing boot camp with the sun out. We had about 25 people out there. A handful of us were boot camp veterans, but the rest of the group were new to the boot camp experience. I hope everyone enjoyed it and will sign up and join us at the West Midtown boot camp location. I believe the plan is to start holding bi-weekly workouts at Atlantic Station on Saturday mornings. I look forward to taking advantage of the additional workout as well as helping introduce new people to The American Boot Camp Company.

This week is the first week of the May boot camp session. I missed Monday's workout, but have been there for all of the other ones. This week has been interesting to say the least. Our number of boot campers continues to grow. We have several people returning from last month's session as well as several new faces. I think the group is now over 20 people. This is really going to be interesting to see how this works out. The bigger crowd makes things more interesting. When I first started boot camp back in October, there were less than 10 of us. We've more than doubled our numbers since then. Some of the other American Boot Camp Company locations have huge crowds. Blackburn Park has 70+ and Chastain Park has 30+ boot campers every morning! It'll be interesting to see if our West Midtown location reaches those numbers one day...

I've got the Big Peach 5K this Saturday morning. My buddy JJ is running the race with me as well as several of the boot campers from my location as well as others. JJ and I are aiming to beat 27 minutes. We'll have to keep a good pace the whole time, but I think we can do it. The American Boot Camp Company is helping sponsor this race and I'm pretty positive there will be a large contingency of boot campers there all wearing matching shirts or something like that. It's really fun to see everyone out there having a good time and cheering everyone on. Collette is especially pumped up about having her bull horn out there to cheer everyone on. Sign up at www.bigpeachrunningco.com and come out and join us. Hope to see you there!