bootcamp = pain

Having just read clairie's blog, it seems our 25km yesterday was long and we actually did 26.2kms according to the garmin. *grins* even better! Means my average pace was 6:22 which is also a little more encouraging :)

Woke up at 4.30am this morning and took me a few minutes to remember why I was waking up at that time on a monday! Then I remembered it was bootcamp and braced myself for getting out of bed. Thankfully, the anti-inflammatories I took yesterday did the trick and I felt surprisingly good. My calves were really tight and sore though, so I spent some time stretching and then hopped into the car.

Got to bootcamp at 5.30am to sign on. Always fascinating to see the different sorts of people that come - a whole myriad, from the terminally unfit to the machines. As usual, I was somewhere in the middle. I felt quite optimistic at that point, thinking I'd be able to do the whole thing despite yesterday's long run.

We started off doing chin ups, which I'm never very good at - I managed 2 which is awful. It doesn't help that my gym doesn't appear to have a chin up bar anywhere to practice on. I'll have to start using the stretching cage soon instead! Then, while everyone else was being tested, the rest of us did little shuttle runs up the hill to stay warm. It was then that I realised that even though my hips and thighs feel reasonably okay, the fatigue was going to get me. instantly felt like I weighed 126kgs again and got out of breath pretty easily. Plus, the insides of my knees joints are a not-good type of sore from the repetitive pounding.

I decided then not to do the cardio test because I didn't want to risk buggering my knee joints. I could feel the strain on them and I'd rather go back fresh on wednesday. It did irritate me a bit not to do it (felt like a slacker) and they had a new version of it (so I don't hold the female record for it anymore, boohoo!). It now involves running 150m circuit of hard sprint, then dropping for 5 push ups and going again. They do 4 sets of 2 minutes each, with 30 seconds recovery between. I did however get to watch a formulate a bit of a cunning plan for it - pretty much everyone just went absolutely flat out from the start and then faded really quickly - I think the key to stuff like that is like doing speedwork at track, where you find the quickest pace you can maintain for a period time and stick at it.

We did ab crunches (I got 10 - again pathetic because my legs felt so heavy) squat hold (1:12 - crap for me again, last time i did 6 minutes!) and push ups (50 which was a bit better but still not usual amount for me - and these were on my knees!)

Wednesday I have the first crack at the good old assault course. I hope I get some energy back by then!