Fitness Ridge Day 4

I did the stop sign hike again, but did it a little slower today. I think I must have hurt my foot in kickboxing yesterday. The top of my left foot feels like I dropped a 10 pound weight on it or something. It was a little swollen when I woke up this morning. Between that and the black ice on some of the trail, I almost talked myself out of doing the whole thing. One girl actually fell on the slippery black ice. I took a picture of the black ice, since I’d never seen it before.

On the way back for the hike we saw a roadrunner. I had never seen one of those before, and almost thought that they were just a cartoon character. But no, they’re real. I put a picture of that below.

My hardest class today was called treading. The way it works is you pick a cardio machine and go as hard as you can for 5 minutes, then recover (meaning go slower) for 5 minutes. Then go as hard as you can for 4 minutes then recover for 4 minutes then go as hard as you can for 3 minutes then recover for 3 minutes, then 2 then 1. By the time this class came around it was 3:30PM (my next to last class) and I was tired. I figured I would sweat a little but not overdo it because I wanted a break already. But the person who was on the machine next to mine challenged me to go all out. So I pushed myself SUPER hard. I really thought I was going to pass out during the 5 and 4 minute hard parts.

Tomorrow is Friday, and that means the last full day of the week. On Saturday we just do the hike and one class. Then, after lunch we get to rest until Monday morning. I’m looking forward to the rest, especially if my foot is still hurting. As long as that’s as bad as it gets, I’ll be okay. Some of the people here have had a terrible time with blisters, something that I have been able to avoid so far. Yay for duct tape! One girl has had a ton of blisters. And another girl had a blister that she popped and got infected with a Staph infection. It got super swollen and turned black. She’s leaving early because the poor thing also hurt her knee.

Today’s schedule:
7:00AM Breakfast (fruit smoothie and a whole wheat English muffin)
8:00AM Hike
11:15AM Gym class (lots of weights)
12:45PM Lunch (turkey sandwich)
1:15PM Cooking demo
2:30PM Ball works (a lot of arm and leg work using a balance ball, super hard)
3:30PM Treading (my hardest class today)
4:30PM Pool (fun, but still hard)
5:45PM Dinner (stuffed bell peppers, too bad I forgot my camera because it would have been great to show a picture of that)




Here’s the black ice. It’s kind of crazy that it’s called black ice because it’s the only part of the pavement that’s not black. The black part is actually thawed out, so is just wet. The “black” ice is actually kind of white. The red stuff is dirt... yep the dirt is red up here.

Here’s a picture of the little roadrunner. We were in the van heading back to campus when the driver spotted it, so we stopped and the little guy came right up close to us.