Success: 3/30/08

I broke an 8 minute mile on Friday! Can you believe it? I ran a mile in 7:57! It was tough, and I was worn out afterwards, but I broke 8 minutes. It was quite an accomplishment for me considering that when I started boot camp my mile time was 14:42. Through a lot of hard work and pushing myself, I've been able to take almost 7 minutes off of my mile time. I don't know how much more I can improve on my mile time, but I'm going to keep pushing myself. Who knows? Maybe one day I can break 7 minutes.

Friday was the last day of the March session of boot camp. It felt great to complete my fourth month, and I'm ready to start another month on Monday. We're going to have some of the folks returning to join us as well as several new boot campers. I'm excited to see who is going to show up. We've had a steady number of new boot campers each month since I started attending. Maybe one day our West Midtown boot camp location will have as many folks as the Blackburn Park boot camp and Chastain Park boot camp locations. We've got a long way to go to get to that point, but attendance has been steadily growing since the West Midtown location started last September.

I'm looking forward to continuing to improve as boot camp progresses. I'm really excited about trying to focus on weight loss over the next few months. Fortunately, I'll be able to do a better job of focusing on eating right. With my busy season of work wrapping up, I won't be working long hours and having unhealthy food and snacks always within my reach. I'll be able to focus on the meal plan and do a better job of not eating bad stuff for me. I know that if I strictly adhere to the meal plan I will continute to see wonderful weight loss results. I've still got a long way to go to get to my weight loss goal.

I'm signed up to run the Sprint for Cancer 10K on Sunday, April 2oth. This will be my second 10K and I'm striving to beat my previous time of 57:25. Several of the boot campers are also going to join me in running the 10K. We're all going to work together over the next three weeks to prepare ourselves for the race. There's also going to be another large crowd from The American Boot Camp Company participating in the race. We're hoping to have a very large crowd show up. You should come out and join us as well...

Chastain Chase 5K Results: 2/25/08

Ran the Chastain Chase 5K on Saturday morning. Finished it in 29:47. Unfortunately, I didn't beat my previous 5K time, but I peformed well. The course around Chastain Park was extremely hilly. One hill along Lake Forrest Drive was so steep that it almost felt like I was running up stairs. The long, gradual hill along Powers Ferry Road also made for a difficult finish. I really struggled on the hills, but boot camp instructors Collette, Denny, and Mari stayed with me the whole time and kept me motivated and moving. I wanted so bad to stop running and walk, but my "support team" kept me running the entire race.

We had a huge group of boot campers at the race. There were probably about 25 people wearing The American Boot Camp Company shirts that showed up for the race. We had runners of all different skill levels wearing a rainbow of different colored shirts. I saw red, blue, green, black, gray, pink, and white boot camp shirts. We had a great presence at the race. Plus it was nice to have most of them there to join me in my third race of this year-long journey.

I also had several friends that joined me in Saturday's race. It was nice to have some additional support from some non boot campers. These are also some of the folks that I hang out with on a regular basis and have personally seen my transformation so far. Their support adds even more to the constant support that I receive from the boot camp staff. Thanks David, Ed, John, Katherine, Paige, and Rebecca. I really appreciate it.

We started week 4 of boot camp at West Midtown today. This is our last week of the February session. Today's workout was tough, but I felt great afterwards. We did a workout consisting of football type drills that included 30-20-10 second sets with sprints in between. We mainly worked the lower body, but then focused on the upper body and abs during our extra credit workout. Yes, I had extra credit today because I didn't exactly follow the meal plan over the weekend. What can I say, I ate some chips and had a couple of beers at The Taco Stand the other night while out with some friends.

I'm looking forward to see what kind of progress I've made this month. I'll find out on Friday when we have our base test. I'll keep you posted on how I do...

Jumping rope brings back memories: 2/21/08

When was the last time that you jumped rope? It was probably some time back in middle school for me. Well, we did a jump rope workout at boot camp on Tuesday. I was in major pain afterwards. My legs were burning...especially my calves! Someone mentioned during the workout that jumping rope for 10 minutes is the equivalent of running 3 miles. I believe them. I was so worn out afterwards. It's been a while since I've been that exhausted after a workout. It was painful to experience, but it felt great to complete such a rigorous workout.

We had a very fun workout this morning. It was the free "Bring a Friend to Boot Camp Day" and we had 4 visitors join us for today's workout. We did a suicide type workout where we ran back and forth between cones and did different exercises at each cone. It's one of my favorite workouts that we do at boot camp. It's fast-moving and we are always doing something different to workout different parts of our body.

Got the Chastain Chase 5K on Saturday morning. I'm really looking forward to it. I actually went and ran around Chastain Park last Saturday afternoon in order to add some bigger hills to my run. I have a couple of small hills on my regular 3 mile route, but none as big as some of those around the Chastain golf course. It was also very nice to be back in my old neighborhood and to see some of the familiar sights that I haven't seen in a couple of years.

I'm hoping I can improve my 5K time on Saturday. I'm aiming to beat 29:02. The pressure is on me to perform well as several of my friends plus a large group from boot camp are running the race with me. I'm also praying that it won't be raining. It's going to be bad enough working out in the rain tomorrow morning. Hopefully, it will move on through and leave us with a dry Saturday morning for the race. I'll keep you posted on how I do. Maybe I'll see you on Saturday morning at the race...