Greg on the Run

Thursday’s Boot Camp was great. We were divided into ability groups and started with a mile run. Our group pushed ourselves the whole way with me setting the pace. I know the pace was easy for some as they came over from the faster group. They ran their mouths and kept us motivated and entertained. Other Team Boot Camp members were holding their own and motivating others.

We then went through I 9 or 10 stations. Legs and abs mostly and then ran another mile. We were the first ones done with the circuit and got in 1/2 mile before they pulled us back to the tennis courts for sprints. We were waiting for one group to finish the circuit and did 100 overhead presses while waiting. I’m stiff today and sure I’ll be even stiffer tomorrow.

Weigh-in for the Challenge was Thursday night. I gained .2 lbs. A little frustrating. I had worked out before the weigh-in so I didn’t need to workout afterwards.

Friday Team Boot Camp went to the Spec Ops workout. One mile run. 30 overhead presses. Sprint 100 yards. Sprint back. Do it three time. Bear crawl 20 yards, High crawl 20 yards, Low crawl 20 yards, sprint 20 yards. Do it three times (I did four, finishing with Charilla.) Built a house twice and then did a striking/punching drill. Grady about dropped me onto my behind with that one.

60 minutes on the bike. Spent about half of that with my HR above 120 but just couldn’t sustain it ofr the next 30, mostly because my legs were trashed from this morning.

I really have liked the workouts last Thursday and today. Being divided by ability, I’m now at the back of the pack when we run and I don’t like it. The great thing is that I’ve learned in the last 18 months that I can push myself and improve.

I’ve even seen some improvements that are quite remarkable to me in the last few weeks. When I want to push myself, I partly rely on a heart rate monitor to measure my effort level. It used to be that I could get going and get my heart rate up. When I got tired, I could back off and it would take a bit of time for my HR to drop. Not anymore. Last night I was running moderately hard on the track with my HR at about 151. I slowed down to run with somebody else and by the time we completed a half lap, my HR had dropped to about 124.

One of things people have asked me is how I’ve managed to run faster in the last year. When you start really slow, there’s only one direction to go and improvement will come quickly. One of things I do work on is speed. One of the ways I do that is, during group runs, to try to catch the person in front of me or wait for somebody to pass me and then try to stay on their tail as long as I can. Today, as I wrote earlier, I’m near the back of the pack and everybody is ahead of me. Try as I might, I couldn’t seem to pump up the speed and close on the person in front of me. Then SSgt Parr passed me and I fell in behind him. That hurt. If we hadn’t finished running when we did, I would’ve Gradied.

The chain of command for the Marines visited today. There seemed to be Marines all over the place but I think it was four that visited. My friend, Pat, sent an email to our instructors with some of their comments:

Your command had interesting comments at the end of boot camp.  Can someone carry me to my car, this was more than I expected, what a workout, etc.  They also said things like – this was great and how pleased they were to come and encouraged us to stick with bootcamp.   We commend you on your work, but we are happy that they notice and hope they appreciate what it takes for you to make this happen.

Ran 3 miles inside on the track Mile 1 – HR=153-155. Mile 2 – HR=128. Mile 3 – HR=155-167. Rn the second mile with Bill who is on another Healthy Challenge team. Got on the arc trainer afterwards for 40 minutes, keeping my HR above 130. After 30 minutes I just ran out of gas and couldn’t seem to get my legs moving any faster so I cut it short.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one feeling like a slug this morning. I woke up with my left lower back in a knot and couldn’t seem to loosen up. When we started doing sprint-jogs, it finally got loose. Then we went to the body bar room. back was ok there. I used the 24-lb bar and was able to do everything except hold the bar out in front of me for an extended period. Almost ready to bump it up again.

Once we were back in the gym we did ab exercises and my back knotted up again, especially when we did anything that involved a V-seat. I needed to stop and try to stretch it twice.

Swam 1000 meters and rode the bike for 45 minutes (HR=125). Just what I needed to get my hamstring loose after thrashing my legs yesterday.

Went to the gym to change after the race but decided to workout, too. Did 60 minutes on the arc trainer with my heart rate above 130. Used the interval workout which raised the resistance fairly high on a regular basis. After that I did 30 minutes on the bike.

Team Boot Camp did the Spec Ops workout. I think the difference was we ran a one mile warm up and they ran a 1 3/4 mile warm up. Last night Sgt McKee asked me if I wanted to be at Spec Ops in the morning. The weather predication was cold and rainy (it was accurate). I answered in the affirmative. The team all decided I was either loony or they hated me.

We started out with learning punching and kicking and paired up. Then we moved to other exercises on the ground and then ended with an exercise where we sprinted from Marine to Marine and punched and kicked.

I think everybody on the team was happy they were there.