- Tuesday’s Workouts:
- Beach Jog (2.7 miles, 49 minutes, no stopping, all jogging!)
- Weigh-in (cue the scary music)
- Swimming (66 laps (just over a mile), 1 hour)
- 1-on-1 session (1 hr)
- Bike Ride (18 ¼ miles, 2 hrs)
Surprisingly it wasn’t that hard to do! I made it to the rocks past the pier in 25 minutes. I was feeling fine and simply turned around for the return trip. I checked my heart rate the entire time and I kept it fairly steady. I was keeping the same pace and it appeared that I would make the return in 25 minutes, but I don’t know what got into me near the end….I actually, REALLY RAN and shaved off a minute to reach the starting point. I don’t think I’ll be doing that kind of running (I’m talking big strides, arms-pumping running, people) anytime soon or frequently, but it was kind of fun to do. Shot my heart rate up, of course. That’s the main thing that holds me back now…when my heart rate gets very high, I get short of breath. So, I’ll just continue to do more cardio workouts and expand my heart rate zones and build up speed to go along with my endurance. Since I achieved the goal that I had declared the day before, I was again really, very proud.And since I had been doing more jogging in the last few days, I was anxious to get measured and weighed. Back at the gym I stepped on the scale and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to be disappointed again as I was last week. When I opened them, I had a 5-lb loss. That was good. That puts me at 42 lbs lost. My goal was to lose 50 lbs, and with only 6 days left, it is unlikely that I will meet that goal. HOWEVER, if I lose at least 6 lbs by Monday, my last day, I will have reached a milestone with which I’ll be happy. In measurements, I lost another 3.75 inches, including a whole inch in my waist. So now I’m down 63.75 inches. I’m thrilled with that! I did bring a “goal dress” with me. It’s a simple, “little black dress” that I bought at Marks & Spencers in Bermuda several years ago and it was too tight from the start. It has a UK size tag in it, which I didn’t pick up on at the time or I didn’t understand the difference between UK sizes and US sizes, I hadn’t tried it on in the store, and I never bothered to take the time to return it. Perhaps it was meant to be, ‘cause I have tried it on and it ALMOST fits perfectly. It’s still a teeny bit tight around my hips but looks pretty good. Results, baby!
Swimming was next. My goal was to do as well or better than my best, which was 72 laps, with 32 laps swum without stopping. Unfortunately the pool was crowded this day. Typically there are 2 people to a lane and that’s no problem. However, this idiot couple insisted on getting in my lane despite seeing that I was doing flip turns. OK, fine, if you’re going to share lanes, get out of the way!!! These idiots kept lollygagging at the wall, preventing me from reaching my goal of not stopping ‘cause I had to stop to glare at them to get them to move. I TOLD them, too, that they kept me from reaching my goal. Idiots! People like this should not be allowed to breed, I swear. I did manage to get 66 laps in, but I think the most I did at once without stopping was 22. Grrrrrr. I vowed that for Thursday I was going to go to the other pool. There are two pools at the Santa Monica Pool where we swim twice a week. There’s a “splash” pool and a “fitness” pool. Both pools have lanes for lap swimming. The splash pool is no more than 3’6” deep and is kept warmer, usually around 85-degrees. The fitness pool is deeper, made for the more experienced swimmers (i.e., faster), and it’s kept at around 76-degrees. With the exception of my first week, I always swam in the splash pool ‘cause it’s warmer and I didn’t want to get in any experienced swimmers’ ways. After Tuesday’s nuisance, though, and since I’m a much better swimmer than I was 11 weeks ago, I think it was time to move to the fitness pool. Dang…76-degrees is chilly when the air temperature isn’t much more or is often lower than that. Anyway, Leg Two of my pseudo-triathlon was complete.
After lunch I had a training session with Eric (v’ball guy). I enjoy training with Eric. I might have mentioned this before, but I’ll say it again. Eric is tough but reasonable, and he’s always challenging. Most of my workouts with him work on core strength. Core (i.e., balance, stability) I got, abs I ain’t got. Eric is the one who’s helping me with the balancing on the yoga ball. I’m afraid I’ve run out of time to master the “aquaman” balance, but I’m doing fairly well with the balance on just my knees. I managed to hold it for 1:45 before my thighs were on fire. My legs were tired, too, from the morning’s jog and swim. That wasn’t good, ‘cause I still had a bike ride to do! Regardless, as always I had a great workout with Eric.
Next up was the Third Leg of my so-called triathlon…the cycling. Now, every triathlon that I’ve ever witnessed usually starts with a swim, then cycling, then running to the finish line, so I was doing mine backwards. And I had breaks in between each leg. No matter. Twelve weeks ago, it would have been impossible for me to do even half of one of those legs. Claire and I rode together, just the two of us again, as we did last Tuesday. As before we took the southbound route. The ride to Manhattan Beach is 9 miles and Hermosa Beach is 10 miles. We had hoped to make it to Hermosa Beach (on her own, Claire could have done that with time to spare) but we started a few minutes later than planned. I’ve written in previous updates that the southbound route is more difficult because it has several inclines and also has a small hill and a big hill to climb. The big hill is steeper on one side than the other. When we approach any of the hills or inclines I speed up as much as I can handle so that I can get some momentum to climb. While the bigger hill was difficult as usual, I did find that it wasn’t as hard to get to the top as it had been. Usually when I’m cycling I have my iPod Nano playing, but Claire and I chatted the entire way and that helps to pass the time very quickly. So, we made it back in 2 hours and it was time to go home. On this day, I jogged 2.7 miles, swam 1 mile, and biked 18 miles within an 8 ½ hour period, with an extra workout thrown in for good measure. And NOW there’s a crazy thought in my head that it would be cool to do them all together. HEY, waitaminute!! Where is Donna and what have you done to her?
In the last few days and most recently on Sunday night during the Survivor finale, it was announced that there would be Open Call Auditions for Survivor on Wednesday in Pala, CA. Pala is about a 2 ½-hour drive south from Marina Del Rey. Throughout the day I had been toying with the idea of heading down there early Wednesday morning, but with only 6 days of fitness camp and a goal to lose 6-lbs, I was hesitant. Not only that, I had never really thought about being on Survivor. I enjoy watching the show, but I would really rather try out for The Amazing Race over Survivor. But then again, when was I ever going to be that close to an easy audition for Survivor? It was really up to me if I wanted to do it, but I received some welcome encouragement from Claire, Nicola, and several others, so I decided to do it. It meant I had to rent a car and then leave Marina Del Rey around 5 or 6 in the morning. Stay tuned for Day 78’s update to see how that turned out!
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