"You're a Bum!"

I arrived in the locker room today just as boot camp was letting out.  A bunch of my buddies came staggering in, warning me that Jeff (who had just taught class) was hyped up today.  Oh boy, here it  comes I thought to myself. 

The boys on my team weren't able to make it to the group workout so it ended up being just Lakshmi and I facing the scale and Jeff.   I felt good about it.  I knew that I had really pushed it this week and made the right choices in what I ate.   What a great day it was, because Laks and I both lost four pounds this week, making my total 89 pounds GONE!  With only 11 more to go to hit that big milestone of 100 pounds lost, I was fired up and ready to work out.

Jeff told us that he'd been watching a "Rocky" marathon and was channeling his inner Mick.  The "Rocky" movies are on my favorites list and I especially like the training montages, but it's a whole new thing to experience it in real life.  He had us hitting the heavy bag and switching up on the elliptical machine.  We were squatting and curling and pressing.  We were doing 200 meter sprints on the rowing machine and planks (me with a 20 pound weight on my back for crying out loud).  Yo Adrian, what a workout.

When he took us over to the elliptical machines at the end of the workout, I knew what was about to happen. It was time for the challenge that defeated me last week...trying to keep the speed at over 100 while on level 20, for a solid minute.  Last week I tried this five times and couldn't last longer than 30 seconds.  I wasn't optimistic.  It's so much harder than it sounds!

Mick is famous for telling Rocky, "You're a bum!" I was determined not to be one too. I put my mind in another place and let my body take over.  At thirty seconds in, I felt like I was losing all of the breathe in my lungs but I kept going.  At ten seconds left, I felt like I couldn't go on, but I was too close to quit.   You can do anything for ten seconds, and so I just kept breathing and kept going and finally the minute was up and I'd conquered last week's challenge!

So the Rocky workout was done. Bring on the gray sweatshirt and the old Chuck Taylors.  One of these days I'm going to run up those steps in Philadelphia.   I would definitely feel like a champ then!