BOOOOT CAAAAAMP!

Boot Camp! It's over!!! I lived! Four weeks of working out every day from 6-7am, baby. I was a slug before, and I feel soooo good now. It really was fun - not the "carry logs through the mud with the instructor screaming in your face the whole way" kind of thing. It WAS intense, though. Daniella, the instructor, didn't let us stop for a minute that whole hour. Monday was upper body - oh! the pushups! - Tuesdays was core, Wednesdays was lower body - LUNGE! LUNGE! LUNGE! - Thursdays was cardio (I thought I was gonna DIE), and Fridays was a mix of everything. So basically the pain went in waves down my body each week! :P

Heh, Daniella was definitely my kind of instructor. She has a quirky sense of humour and enjoyed joking around with us while pushing us to our limits. She'd routinely yell out things like, "Squeeeeeze your bum!" or "Feeeeel the jigglies!" or "That's a spic-ay meat-a-ball!"

Probably my favourite bootcamp moment? At about 6:15 in the morning, she led us over to a paved path leading downhill from the schoolyard to the neighbouring park. On one side was a playground, and on the other, the fence and yard of a neighbouring house. She told us to (a) hold out both arms and (b) hop on one foot... "like a chicken" (really? chickens hop on one foot?) all the way down the hill. Demonstrating, she then proceeded to squawk like a chicken all the way down. This royally freaked out the dog that was apparently sleeping right on the other side of the fence. He started BARKING AND BARKING AND BARKING, shattering the early morning silence as we all tried to follow Daniella's lead (um, minus the clucking), but really couldn't cause we were laughing so stinkin' hard. It was really her that made it fun and bearable (even though I was cursing her when she made us run up and down the hill for three minutes!).

So. Results? Visible muscle gained (to me, who had a point of reference before, so no, no pictures! Hehe), 9 pounds lost, 6.5 inches lost in various places, and I'm really happy about the fit test results...

Pushups - the most you can do in one minute: from 22 to 49 (gah! I wanted to get to 50, but the minute was up... aaaand I was about to collapse)
Crunches - the most you can do in one minute: from 35 to 54
Plank hold - as long as you can: from 1:36 to when she stopped us at 3:00
Squat hold - as long as you can: 45 seconds to 1:42
1 km run - 5:42 (ugh, that's slow!) to 4:57 (better, but still slow. Whatever I'm a slow runner.)

I would definitely sign up again (though, uh, how 'bout NOT when I'm on holidays! I'd like to sleep in, thankyouverymuch!).

(Now the challenge will be to keep it up when I'm not actually going to a class! Yikers!)

YEAHOO!