Epic Total Body Training Fitness Challenge

Whew! Has it really been 11 days since my last post? In my defence, there has been some "stuff" going on in my household so blogging hasnt been my top priority, but im back!

So some of you may remember that I was on the fence on whether or not I wanted to do the fitness challenge that was being put on by my bootcamp, well I'm happy to say I did it! And it was actually fun, not torture! Thats me by the way, flipping a 260 lb tractor tire 5 times! As hard as that sounds, it was actually not the hardest exercise, that award goes to the lovely atomic pushups.

So the competition drew alot more people than originally anticipated so unfortunately, the obstacle course got nixed. Oh well, still plenty to do! The competition was scheduled to run from 1-6:30pm, with the warmup starting at 12:45. The morning of the competition brought such lovely weather! Can you sense the sarcasm? It was raining a monsoon and there was thunder. Nice. What kind of an omen is that? Luckily it stopped by the time it was time to leave.

The first few exercises were indoors, which was good, because teh rain kept coming off and on. The first exercise of the day was EZ Curl bicep curls with 25% of your body weight. We were competing against another person, facing eachother and we had one minute to complete as many as possible. These took forever! I ended up being last (lucky me) and one person didnt show up so there was an odd number of people and I had to compete all by myself. I did ok, completing 19. The next event was box jumps/ step ups. You could choose between the two of them, and I chose step ups. I had this deep fear that I would be doing jumps and I would kick the box and fall and Im glad I went with the step ups because one lady did fall and kocked the wind out of herself. Poor woman.

After that, we moved outside and did a kettelbell run, where you had 5 different kettlebells ranging from 52 lbs to 26 lbs and there were 5 different platforms to transfer them to. Luckily the heaveiest went on the shortest platform as the tallest one was taller than me! That was was pretty difficult and I didnt expect it to be. Then came the infamous tire flipping that every single person was dreading! I actually thought it was easier than I imagined it would be. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to lift it once and I did 5 without any help. The only hitch was when I dropped the tire on my finger. That was not fun! Next event up was the sled dog pull. Basically, there was this little metal sled with a post in the middle that you pile weight plates onto and pull it backwards with a TRX. Seems simple enough. The sled was piled with 75% of your body weight so again, us chunky monkeys got the shaft. By this time it was about 4pm, so we have been doing events for 3 hours and we were all exhausted! At least now I know what carb depletion feels like! Just befoer this event, my lovely hubby showed up with his dad but unfortunately he got a call from work and had to leave before he got to see me participate in anything :( I forgot to mention that my mom had been there all day, up until the sled pull, taking pics. Thanks mom! So as I mentioned everyone was really tired and we were running backwards so needless to say there was a few falls.

Next we moved back inside, and I might have failed to mention that inside was on the third floor. That was real fun at this time of day. Next event up was the plank off. I was one of the first to bail out at one minute,a nd there was quite a few of us that bailed out at that point. Everyone started dropping off after than but the two finalists battled it out at...get this... seven minutes! The second place finisher dropped out at the seven minute mark then the winner collapsed. What Rockstars! I can't even fathom doing a seven minute plank. Crazyness!

Now it was time for the dreaded Atomic Pushups! So those of you not familiar with atomic pushups, what you do is put your feet in the trx loops, which are hanging 12" off the ground flip over to pushup position then the move is: pushup, crunch knees into chest, return, repeat. We had a minute to do as many as possible. This is the hardest exercise I have ever done in my life! In the workshop, I managed to do three but at the competition, I did twelve! Yeah I'm a rockstar! Last exercise of the day was a 1k run. Not so fun when it was 5pm by this point. The winner ran it in just over three minutes. I know, crazyness. I ran it in 5:18. I was aiming for 6:30 so I blew it outta the water! Phew done!

We all hobbled back upstairs after the run for some awards, food and cocktails. I must say, whomever made that chicken can cook for me anyday, it was amazing! The first, second and third place finishers got mini gold, silver and bronze kettlebells with a dog tag with their name on it. So cute! Well that concludes the challenge for 2010, now I have a whole year to get in shape to win one of those kettlebells :)

Needless to say I am a little sore today, but life moves on and tonight is the first night back at Pilates. This shall be interesting...

*editors note, if this post is riddled with spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes, I will fix it later, gotta run!