Posted At : July 1, 2008 9:42 AM | Posted By : Cameron
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FitnessWell, I skipped my week three update, but I thought today would be as good as any to do another update. I'm at the middle of week four now (we get Friday off for the 4th). I only have two more session left, and I can definitely tell that bootcamp's made a difference.
So far the count is twelve pounds lost, and a significant visible impact on the love handles and spare tire. They aren't totally gone yet, but they are definitely on their way out. I've also gone from almost 23% (22.8%) body fat down to nearly 19% (19.2%) body fat during bootcamp. A significant improvement and pretty impressive considering it's really only been three weeks (+ one day) since I first took measurements.
Thursday morning we'll be doing PT testing again to see if we improved on our mile time, situps, pushups and dips. I'm anticipating a definite improvement in my mile time, but probably not as dramatic an improvement on the others. The bootcamp workouts really keep your blood pumping, they don't give you any breaks at all during the entire workout (which is a good thing) and involve alot of cardio. So much so that I'm often so tired from all the running around that I'm barely able to do the pushups and other strength building exercises when it's time to do them. As a result, I'm unsure how much I will really improve on the strength PT, but I will definitely improve my mile run, and here's how I know...
Each workout has a name, some of them are weird and hard to figure out. One's called "The Caterpillar", one's called "House of Pain", and yesterday's was called "Up Down". Well, today's had a pretty easy name: "The Long Run".
The long run started out innocently enough. We were told that the workout was "a surprise", and we started our warm-up by running just like always. Then we ran, and ran, and ran, and finally everyone figure out there was no warm-up - today was the long run. Well, I felt surprisingly good during the first two thirds of the run, keeping pace with the crowd, and even moving to the front a few times. They loop the group back on itself in circles now and then to allow the people in the back to catchup, which means that sometimes you may be at the front and find yourself at the back again suddenly after a loop. My goal for the first two thirds was to reach the front again by the next loop.
Since I'd run a very similar route two weeks ago for the 5K I did in Candler Park, I could tell immediately that I was doing better this time around. I ran well beyond the point where I'd had to stop and walk during the 5K.
...but then I suddenly found myself at the front of the pack, right behind Tim (I think it was Tim) the trainer who was the pace setter, running uphill. I knew he could tell I was behind him, and I felt him pick up the pace a little. I didn't want him to get away from me, so I kept pace and sped up too. By the time we reached the top of the hill it was time for a loopback again - down the hill and back up. That was the last you saw of Cameron pushing anything. I walked a little after that, but ran most of the last third of the run.
All in all, we did about 4.5 miles in about 45 minutes, for an average of about 10 minutes per mile - not too bad for someone who couldn't even run a whole 5K (3.1 miles) without walking just two weeks ago.
