Friday, October 6: Sweet Redemption

As I said, boot camp has its ups and downs. And it's pretty much all mental. Honestly, I am physically able to do these tasks, given the gradual strengthening over the last several weeks, but my mental state really determines how I do.

After Wednesday, I was determined to make Friday better. Walked in, and noticed that as opposed to the Death Squad (DIs Ruben and Wong), Alex and Titus were running the class. Yay. The knee concern was still there - I had spent the whole day with an Ace bandage on my left knee, over a healthy dose of Ben Gay. Which didn't go unnoticed by my co-workers early in the morning; when Renee mentioned the smell in the office, I owned up to it and asked them to call the retirement home. In the pup tent, with no shame, wrapped my left knee with the TruFit wrap, and the right knee with the tried-and-true Ace knee support. Luckily, my cutoff camo capris covered up both of them. Not that I was so worried about my appearance - I resign myself to the fact that I will look like complete a$$ during the class, no makeup, hair pulled back, and by the end, sweating profusely. Unlike Private Flashdance, who had stopped wearing her satin camo headband, and decided to bling out her uniform tee like Paris Hilton decorated her Sidekick, but instead of Swarovski crystals, she decorated the 'Pure Power" part of her t-shirt with glitter. I kid you not. Nay, I digress.

I dressed with one ear to the outside world - it seemed as if Titus and Alex were on a tear, so I wondered what was in store. Made nervous chit-chat with the recruits. Titus called for 6 laps around. Managed that. Back to the PT area for jumping jacks, where as we started our jumping backs, Titus hollered, "Going to 150" Are you kidding??? No, kids, he wasn't. Actually, went beyond that to 165, because he was all about breaking the record from the class before. The heart didn't explode, so I was thankful. Got through the 15 mountain jumpers, 25 in-and-outs, 60 seconds of planks, and then running around the gym in 12 seconds. One thing I learned from the petite recruit people call "Ms. Perfect" is that it’s all about your starting position. If you are to run at a good clip, you need to start at the front of the pack. Which I did, and it allowed me to run at my own pace, and more importantly, not finish last. And then, for the first time since my first week, we built a house. Much much easier than the first time; I finally had the upper body strength to both hold myself up, and scramble at a good clip on my belly over the shredded tires.

Back to the PI space. Partnering up, we had 20 clapping pushups, and then two sets of 25 Japanese sit-ups. Don't know if I described these before, but the exercise consists of one person lying on a mat, knees bent, while the other person sits on their feet, and holds on behind their partner's knees. To this day, I have never been able to do these at all. But I made it through one set - the second set I wimped out and did normally. Small victory. And then Alex directed us to go one lap around, doing partner bear crawls. One person would lie on their stomach, while the other person bear crawled over them. And repeat the whole way around. Manageable.

For the first time ever, I had to break ranks to visit the ladies room. The task ahead of us would have been a lot more difficult without - 100 canteen sit-ups. The break separated me from my partner, and I ended up with the same woman who had taught me to breathe through the throwdowns a few sessions back. Breathing easy, we managed to go at a good clip. She did a great job once we got to 40, starting to count backwards. 50 got tough, and as we got closer to 100, it started to hurt. Titus hopped up and sat on one of the hurdles, and watched us (pressure!!!!), and as I showed signs of giving up, he hollered words of encouragement, more than I have ever heard. With a loud grunt, I finished 100. As I got up, Titus gave me a high five and offered words of congratulations. A different Titus than before.....

The rest of the workout is a bit fuzzy, but I do remember Alex running a very upper body intensive workout. Something with 25 dips against the windowsill, running around a lap, adding some other exercise onto it, and then running another lap around. Surprisingly enough, my knees were not reprimanding me. Coasted through to group sit-ups. And then took a bit of time to flirt with probably the only cute guy in my class on Friday, informing him that I had signed up for 6 more months, so I could give him grief through a subway series (little did I know at that time); Titus passed by, giving his kudos to the Yankees. My lame attempt at flirting with Ed. And then when we were heading down in the elevator, a group of people asked us if Lauren was still working us hard, poking me in the tricep as he asked. My response? "Ow."

If Wednesday was the valley, I had started my ascent. Hoping that it would carry on to Saturday