Best Body Bootcamp: Week 1 Recap

Week 1 of Best Body Bootcamp is officially in the books, and I have to say it was a rather successful one.

Week 1 Workouts

Sunday: OFF
Monday: 2 miles @ 10:16 (treadmill)
Tuesday: BBC Workout A + 20 min walk with the family
Wednesday: 3 miles - intervals @ 9:52 (treadmill)
Thursday: BBC Workout B
Friday: OFF
Saturday: 4 mile "long" run @ 9:58 (outside!)

Goals
You may remember that I made commitments to two other goals for BBC:

Eating at least 3 servings of produce per day
Drinking 72 oz of water per day

Perhaps they don't sound like much, but for me, these goals are difficult to meet each day. I'd rather stuff my face with cereal and brownies than eat fresh vegetables or fruit. Seriously, those people who "crave" a plate of broccoli or look forward to a daily apple? I'm convinced they are aliens.

Same thing goes for water. It's just so... boring. And no, adding lemon slices to it does not make it any more exciting. Give me Coke Zero or give me death.

Alas, I know I need to, at the very least, moderate my unhealthy habits, so I worked hard this week to meet my two goals. And I met them, for five of the seven days!

Don't get me wrong: I definitely had to force myself to chug an extra bottle of water or choose some tangerines over those Easter Reese's peanut butter cups after lunch. (Ok, so I had the oranges and a handful of PB cups. Sue me.)

As we move forward in BBC, I hope this first week of meeting my goals wasn't just beginner's excitement, and that I continue to shove fresh food and water down my gullet.

Week 1 Focus: Strengths & Weaknesses
Instead of making these updates solely about lists of numbers and goal updates, I thought I'd center each recap around a particular topic that had my mental muscles flexing throughout the week. Therefore, I'll end each rundown with some thoughts about the challenge and what I'm learning about myself (besides the fact that I still hate broccoli).

This week, I want to discuss strengths and weaknesses. Like my use of visual aids, there?

Heading into this challenge, I knew that I was capable of certain things: running a marathon, wielding my Teacher Voice to rein in 35 high school sophomores, baking chocolate chip cookies from scratch. So, I wasn't all too nervous about the scheduled runs and weight lifting sessions because I knew that I could conquer whatever was set before me.

However, it hit me pretty early on in Workout A that I'm a total, utter weakling. Mr. Burns from The Simpsons probably has more muscle tone than me.

(source)

Though I know I haven't taken weight lifting seriously since my college boyfriend taught me how to do bicep hammer curls in 2002, I figured that I couldn't be too terribly far behind in my abilities since I'd been running so much for so long.

WRONG.

What I noticed this week:

Weakness: The sad state of affairs that my quads, butt, and calves are in. Workout B simply killed me.
Strengths: My upper body held up surprisingly well. I had less trouble with tricep and back exercises than I would've imagined (you saw my sorry arms above).

What I learned overall in Week 1 is that I don't really know myself physically.

Sure, I can crank out a 20-miler. But it turns out that I haven't really pushed myself in a long, long time, and the strength training workouts proved that.

So onward to Week 2, where I'm looking to tackle my Mr. Burns physique and work on turning it into at least a little more like one of the Golden Girls. Come on, we all know Dorothy was packing some muscle under all of those flowing layers and tall, slouchy boots.

Am I the only one? Tell me about a time you discovered a surprise strength or weakness during a workout.