Fitness Safari

Sorry it's taken so long to post my Warrior Challenge summary and results. Let me begin by saying this was quite a challenge after all. To do well, this competition required a balanced level of fitness. You couldn't just be strong; you couldn't just be fast; you couldn't just have great cardio conditioning; and, most of all, you couldn't be weak minded. Overall in the women, I was listed as 15th out of what looked like 29 women in total who competed. Not too bad for a first-timer, I think. I finished horribly in my run - 22nd; but finished 3rd in pull ups (did 10 from dead hang) and 8th in Burpees. I hit the wall halfway through my burpees - just couldn't keep the pace, but still managed 38 in 2 minutes. By the time we got to the mystery challenge, I was spent. We had to hold our sea-water soaked 20-lb sandbags (40lb for the men) over our heads for as long as possible. My entire body, which had been depleted of glycogen for quite some time due to the fact ...

I'd like to introduce you all to my new best friend - The Iron Gym. Yes, it is one of those cheesy as seen on TV widgets, but this one ACTUALLY WORKS! First, when I couldn't find the Iron Gym at Walmart, I made the mistake of settling for the Perfect Pull Up bar instead. What a PITA that was. Required drilling like 8 holes in my landlord's doorways - not sure they would have been to keen on THAT...and all kinds of measurements and hardware, etc. Scratch that. Hit Target yesterday and picked up this bad boy (pictured below) for $29.99 instead. Will return the other POS to Walmart after the holiday. The beauty of the Iron Gym is that, once you put the little contraption together, you don't need any hardware or tools to install it in your doorway. Initially thought I wasn't going to be able to use it when it was determined that the doorways of this 100-year old carriage house I'm renting were too thick and moldings were too wide to hold it in place. Bummer, ...

Here she is. Sandbag #2...weighing in at 30lbs on the dot, she nearly killed me Friday night. My deep sand run was more of a walk, jog, gasp, walk, struggle, jog than anything else, but I completed the entire mile without dropping the weight once. I guess that's a start. I have two more weeks to train, so at least I can give it a few more tries at this weight before going up to 35 and beyond...40 is going to be a bitch, but I will make it. Two days later and my legs are still heavy. My shoulders and back are also sore, but I did surf hard for an hour or so yesterday, so that's probably has more to do with my upper body stiffness than anything else. I've decided that Sunday will be my eat-whatever-I-want day as I have a BBQ to got to and I need to calories to recover. Next run with this bitch will be Monday, July 4th, at about 7 a.m. Not looking forward to it, but I will get it done. Wish me luck that I can speed up my time a bit. Did the last 30 lber in deep sand the whole ...