The results are in....

I finished my boot camp challenge last week. It was great fun! For eight weeks I worked out five days a week, twice with the group and three times on my own. The group consisted of six ladies and two trainers. Each week we had a different theme. One day we focused on cardio and one day we focused on strength training. Some of the themes were "Siamese twins" where we did a lot of partner centered exercises,including carrying each other piggyback! Another theme was "pirates" and we exercised on the beach. We had to run sand dunes and do relays, hard. Another was "army" and we had to work out while carrying backpacks with weights in them. It was quite challenging but super fun. The trainers and ladies were so nice, it made it so much easier to workout.

We also did fitness testing to help us monitor how we were progressing. We had to see how many times we could run around a rugby field in five minutes(a rugby field is about the size of a soccer field). We also had to see how many squats, lunges, push ups, tricep dips and sit ups we could do in thirty seconds. The last test was how long we could hold the plank position.

The first week I ran around the field 2 1/4 times.

Week 8 I ran around 2 3/4 times!! It was much easier.

I also improved on each of the other tests, too. I don't have my tally sheet with me. I will fill it in when I have it.

I do know that the first week I was able to hold the plank position for 40secs. Week eight I was able to hold it for one min and 15 seconds!! Big improvement.

I had big hopes of losing a lot of weight and inches but, unfortunately, that didn't happen. I didn't lose any weight and lost only 2 1/2 inches. I was super disappointed about this for a while and thought it wasn't worth it. Now I realize that a lot changed and I am in much better health and fitness now than probably ever before. When I started this challenge, I didn't run at all and now I am running 20 min on the treadmill. Today I went on my first ever run with Bill! That is something I have wanted to do for a while and never thought I would be able to do it.

One other good thing that has come from this is that I no longer have persistent back pain! Now that is worth every early morning session!