Boot Camp Work-Out #1

Here it is: the first boot camp style work-out I'm posting on this blog in its entirety. This is one we've done before, so give it a go today. This is one you can do anywhere, and you don't need any equipment! Here are the 8 exercises to do:

1. Burpees (everyone's favorite!)
2. Push-Ups
3. Squat Jumps
4. Crab Dips (don't forget to bend your elbows)
5. Single-Leg Hip Raises
6. Fire Hydrants (do assigned reps per each leg)
7. Coffins (straight-leg sit-ups with arms crossed)
8. Leg Lifts

And here are the instructions/assigned reps:

Do 10 reps of each exercise, and follow that with 30 seconds of either Mountain Climbers, Jumping Jacks,  or High Knees.
Start back up at the first exercise, this time doing 9 reps of each exercise, and then the 30 seconds of Mountain Climbers, Jumping Jacks, or High Knees.
Repeat the same thing with 8 reps, 7 reps, 6 reps, all the way down to one rep of each, each time doing 30 seconds of Mountain Climbers, Jumping Jacks, or High Knees after exercise #8.

Just for clarification, you don't need to do the Mountain Climbers, Jumping Jacks, or High Knees after every exercise... do them after every set: do all the exercises, and then do the 30 seconds before starting over.

There's more to come, but enjoy this one!!!

Provo and Echo: That's how you do it... and "What was that?"

Again, I'm a little late writing about my last two races.  It's been a busy summer, what with working, training, racing, and everything else.  I feel like I've probably said that before.  But with that, here it is:

I competed in the Provo Tri on Saturday, June 23rd.  I told you it was a little late to write about this, so I think this race can easily be summed up with two pictures:

Second out of the water!

1st place in my age group (6th overall)!!!

Three weeks later, on July 14th, I competed in my next race: the Echo Tri in--of course--Echo Reservoir at Coalville, UT.  This race didn't turn out quite so well, but it didn't start out quite so well, either. 

Driving up to Echo Reservoir, everything seemed fine.  Once we got there, though, we were told that our campsite, which we reserved through the race organizer's website, was not close to the race start or transition area (the website gave me the impression that it would be, and there were a lot of open campsites close by).  We drove up to where the campsites were, talked with the camp host, and were able to change our site to one close to where we wanted to be.

Once we had set up camp, we decided to walk around, check out the water and transition area.  The lake was very low; I overheard someone saying that water levels had dropped 35 feet in the previous five days!  That meant a very long, steep, rocky run between getting out of the water and getting into transition.  One of the other athletes who was walking around near us found a few shards of glass on the beach.  That was scary!  Luckily, the race organizers had decided to set up a "shoe transition" area just by the water line.  Instead of driving in to Park City (only about 15 miles away), I decided I would use my Altras.

There was also supposed to be a race "walk-through" by the race directors.  That never happened, and because I waited around so long for that, dinner ended up being quite late.  The weather forecast had been showing rain all week long, and I didn't feel like racing in rain.  Needless to say, I was feeling very nervous about this race, and it was still the night before.

When I finally got to sleep, I didn't rest the best, either.  I have become accustomed to weird dreams the night before a race.  Usually, those dreams revolve around forgetting something: running shoes, bike helmet, wetsuit, etc.  The weirdest dream I remember was one where I forgot my bike, so I had to ride a horse.  This time, however, the dream revolved around the weather.  In my dream, which repeated itself two or three times, lightning struck the water and killed everyone who was in the lake.  This scared me, and I almost withdrew from the race because of it.

Due to a number of the things from the evening before and the night, I then woke up late.  The race started at 7:00, and I didn't wake up until 6:00.  Luckily, we were right next to transition, but I still felt rushed.  Each person was assigned a transition spot, and mine was a great spot.  However, I was late setting everything up, and my breakfast ended up being a pack and a half of Clif Shot Bloks.  That makes for a good energy boost half an hour before race start, but it doesn't make for a very good breakfast.

Once everything was set up, I pulled on my wetsuit and headed down the lake for the start.  This is when I realized that I had left my bike pump in the car and had never fully inflated my bike tires, and I didn't have time to fix that now.  Instead of riding on 120 psi, I would be riding on 75-80 psi. 

It seemed that everything that could go wrong was going wrong, so I shouldn't have been surprised when we waited around in the water for an extra 10 or 15 minutes before a late race start.  Once we started going, I still didn't feel ready to go.  I decided today would be a race that I would be happy with just finishing.  The swim went rather well, but I can do rather well in the swim without really trying too hard.  At the Provo Tri, I had a great swim; today's wasn't anywhere close.  I got out of the water, pulled on my Altras, and made the long, hard trek up to transition and my bike.

The bike was about the same... it turned out well, but wasn't great.  The first half, I felt very slow and week.  About two miles before the turn-around, a group of 5 racers passed me, and I watched them drafting off each other until we turned around and after.  Drafting on the bike is illegal in triathlon, so this made me mad!  I never caught back up to them, but the second half of my bike was much better!

Once I got back to transition, I pulled my Altras back on and took off on the run.  I was feeling great by now!  My run pace was a blistering pace for me, and I thought I might actually break my race split personal best.  And then I got to the turn-around for the run.  I had put in a great 5K (3.1 miles), and only had that much left to go, and I could keep this pace for the rest.  That was until I actually turned around and hit the proverbial wall.  My run pace dropped by almost 2 minutes per mile, and my run split ended up being one of my slowest. But I finished!  I was happy and still alive; my dream had not come true.  In fact, the weather held out and was perfect through the whole race!

So there it was, race 5 of 8 this season was in the books.  It wasn't the best, but it was over.  I didn't place, and--in fact--I'm not even sure what my time was.  According to my pledge, I donated $25 to Special Olympics Utah for Provo and $10 for Echo.  And now I had a six-week race break before my next.  I have been training hard and getting ready for this next one, and now I have just over two weeks.  I'll be heading up to Heyburn, ID, for my second go at VikingMan.  It looks like it's going to be a great event; two of my brothers-in-law (Dave and Jared) might do this race, too, as well as Dave's girlfriend, Janette.   This was a fun but hard one last year, and I'm looking forward to the same this year!  And then it's Yuba in September and PumpkinMan in October.  This has been a fun season so far, and I'm glad it's not over yet!