Thursday - November 24
Schedule
7:00 AM Breakfast
7:50 AM Hike Descriptions
8:00 AM Leave for Hike
11:15 AM Stretch Class
12:20 PM Lunch
1:30 PM Cooking Demonstration
2:30 PM Total Body H2O
3:30 PM Ball Works
4:30 PM Treading (Cardio)
5:45 PM Dinner
6:15 PM Increasing Your Income (Goals for Next Week)
Meals
Breakfast Bacon and Egg Sandwich 284 Calories
Lunch Sunchoke & Potato Soup 122 Calories
Mediterranean Pita w/ Turkey 151 Calories
Dinner Grilled Turkey w/ Broccoli 400 Calories (approx. - didn't eat the yams)
Pumpkin Creme Brulee' 96 Calories
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Total 1,053 Calories
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! My Thanksgiving is very unusual this year..... nothing is "normal" for me. Not around family, no authentic Thanksgiving meals, no looking through the ads for shopping (which I actually am very sad about :( ), etc. Having said that, I am extremely grateful for so many things in my life! Obviously, as I have previously stated, I am grateful for all of my family and friends! Being away on this "family holiday" makes me value and appreciate them so much!!
However, today I am also extremely thankful that I am able to overcome a lot of my doubts about myself. I just finished literally CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN!!! And I am not exaggerating at all! The point we went to is referred to as the Pinnacle. As you can see in the pictures that follow, we started off in a parking lot at the bottom of the mountain. We had to hike/climb through a TON of black lava rocks. That was exhausting in and of itself. We continued through sandy trails until we reached the base of the mountain. Beautiful white sandstone. From here, the inclines were insane for me who has never truly hiked before, let alone hike up a mountain. (Honestly, I don't feel like the pictures even do the elevation transitions or the beauty of the surrounding nature justice.)
I always make it my mission to stay with the lead guide (the fast group) and at times this is extremely difficult for me (but I still do it). I have been here for 4 days now but my cardio is still not great. I seem to do "ok" on level terrain, however climbing and elevation really hit me hard. I was huffing and puffing as I was climbing up the mountain. There were several times where I honestly did not know if I could continue. I was exhausted. My legs felt like jelly and were aching so badly. My back ached (I assume a lot from bad posture as I was climbing and trying to overcompensate leaning forward to make sure I didn't fall). It was also extremely hard for me to breathe. Our guide just kept on trucking hardly breaking a sweat.....
Imagine feeling exhausted, light headed, legs throbbing and feeling like jelly, and back aching all while standing on a sharp angled sandy rock more than halfway up a mountain. I kept telling myself that I could do it, but honestly I didn't believe it. When I finally did reach the top of the Pinnacle, it was such a feeling of accomplishment, relief, and happiness! I DID IT!!!!
We sat up on the top of the Pinnacle for a few minutes taking pictures and chatting. However, once you go up a mountain, you must also go down. :P Down was so much easier I must say although you definitely have to watch where you are placing your foot so you literally don't go sliding down the mountain. The negative to going down is that it is hard on your knees. Unfortunately, I do have a bad/weak knee and yes I started feeling it. Really worried me but I just tried to take it easy on it. We finally reached the bottom of the mountain but that was still just the middle of our hike. Really???? UGH.
So off we trekked through what started as sandy paths with some lava stone here and there through shrubs and grasses. Pretty soon we started walking on very soft and deep sand. Walking on soft sand on a beach can be tiring.... just imagine hiking up and down hills in deep sand for an extended period of time!! (Even writing about this is making my legs hurt again... lol) Eventually we came to more sandstone ledges and we began to climb down them. Obviously, sandstone is made up primarily of sand which can make for some very slippery surfaces in certain areas. When there are large gaps between rocks and you are climbing down, there is always the fear of your foot sliding off of the rocks. I just tried to make sure I had good footing before I moved but it was difficult considering that our guide was moving very quickly and I "had" to keep up with her. At one point we stopped to "mark" that we were there..... we added a rock to the pile of rocks that other hikers had created. It is funny because you will see these piles of rocks every so often in the middle of nowhere. Kind of leaving our stamp without leaving anything behind.
When all was said and done, I burned more than 1300 calories on this 2-1/2 hour hike! I felt very proud of myself.
After the hike, we came back and I went to Stretching class. It is 45 minutes of yoga and stretching which felt very good on my aching legs and back. As soon as the class was over, it was lunchtime.
After lunch, we had a Cooking Class with our chef. He showed us how to prepare low calorie BBQ Chicken "Pizza", Cesar Salad Dressing, sunchoke and potato soup, a seasoned turkey breast, and he let us sample Silk Egg Nog (YUMMY!).
Then it was off to Total Body H2O. This was a water aerobics class where we used weights, treading water, and other swimming exercises to burn calories. It was a pretty good class today and my arms were burning when class was finished.
After this, I went to Ball Works. Who would have known that a large bouncy ball which weighs less than two pounds could give you an insane workout?? We did so much with that ball.... we rolled it, threw it, bounced it, held it above our heads, laid on it, rolled on it, put our feet on it, sat on it, kneeled on it, and bumped our butts on it (and probably did more things that I forgot about!).
After this, I limped over to the Treading class. Treading is a cardio exercise that can be done on the treadmill, elliptical, or bicycles. The treadmill is the hardest (because when it is going, you can't slow down or you will fly off the back of it), so of course I chose it. The rules of this class are you Sprint (go as fast as you can) for 5 minutes and then you can recover (slow down) for 5 minutes, then you sprint again but now for 4 minutes and then you can recover for 4 minutes, then sprint for 3/recover for 3, and so on. Once you get down to one minute, you have to do it twice. As the times got shorter, I kept increasing my speed. It was a long 45 minutes on the treadmill.
After this I went to dinner and then to a class for those people staying through at least next week. Luckily class was fairly short tonight. It was about getting us to set goals for ourselves for next week. After class, I went back into the fitness room and worked out again by myself for approx. 20 minutes. I really feel like I should be doing a lot more extra but I want to be mindful of my body. I have been working out very intense over the last 4 days and I don't want my body to crash. So I will start my extra workouts gradually so I do not overload my body.
Overall, today was a super challenging day and I crushed it! I not only completed all of my workouts successfully, but I also overcame a lot of doubt that I had about myself! I would say today was a great day! :)
* A note about the pictures..... many of these pictures have other people in them only because as I was hiking I would snap pictures in an attempt to capture the surrounding area or the terrain.
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