Can it get any tougher?

Wednesdays workout was PAINFUL. I thought that I was the only one who could barely walk on Thursday, but Susan and Tina confirmed that they too, were in serious pain.

Kim had us do:

1. walking "double dip" lunges
2. walking squats

In between sets, we had to run all of the stairs at Rio Sport & Health twice. If you have been there, then you KNOW what I am talking about.

After our second "run", we had to do even more reps including:

1. walking lungs with weights
2. walking squats and arm presses with weights
3. 20 jumping squats (quite painful)

I think we did even more, but I try to put bad memories out of my head. To finish, we did high side leg kicks and a few ab workouts.

I left "stinky". I have never worked so hard in my life. And our awesome reporter Karen was there to doucment our trama with her camera. I was so sore I could hardly walk. My cardio workout on Thursday was very light. I left feeling defeated. However, this mornings workout was much easier. I may have gotten my legs back.

This Sunday is our 2nd challenge and it is a Soccor Challenge at the Maryland Soccer Complex with the Washington Freedom Soccer Organization. Check back on Sunday evening for the details and if you want to support us, come out to the Washington Freedom vs the FC Gold Pride, Sunday at 4pm.

Slow and Steady

Once again, Tuesdays are our weigh-ins and here are the results that will be posted in the paper for Week #6:

David Drayer: +0.5 lbs.
Richard Feld: -1.0 lbs.
Susan Feidelman: -1.0 lbs.
Jen Green: -5.5 lbs.
Tina Hardy: -1.0 lbs.

It was so difficult for me being the biggest loser for week #6 as I watched the disappointed looks on my teammates faces. They are working just as hard as I am, but the scale was just not their friend.

At tonight's weign-in for week #7 (remember, we are a week ahead), I lost another 2.5 pounds. That means that I am down 23 pounds. It feels AWESOME! Others on the team did well too, but I will not reveal theirs until the it is published. Remember, you can keep track of us online at: http://www.gazettehealthychallenge.net/

Also today, to sweat off that extra water weight, I took my first Spin class at Rio Sport & Health with Kelly. I was nervous but she was a great instructor who made me feel welcomed and gave me the confidence that I needed to keep going. It was much easier than walking on the treadmill. The hour flew by. Next week, she is offering a 90 minute class where I hope to burn off even more calories. Yay! Now, if I could just get the soreness out of my bum to go away! Ha!

Results from the Germantown 5 miler

As I posted earlier, our first challenge was the Germantown 5 Miler. The Blue Team did great. Here are our times:

59:17 David Drayer
61:50 Richard Feld
62:32 Jen Green
68:04 Susan Feidelman
75:56 Tina Hardy

And here is a note from Cliff Chiet, Publisher, The Gazette, Montgomery County:

"Our first challenge, the 5 miler, was excited for all who participated. For every challenge we give .5% weight loss to the winning team and .3% weight loss to the second place team.

After lots of consideration, we have decided to declare the BLUE TEAM the winner of this challenge. All five members of the team participated and all five crossed the finish line.

We congratulate all RED TEAM contestants and Charles Tresky for finishing the race under 50 minutes!!

We have 3 more fun challenges so may the games continue."

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It is a good thing that it was decided that we won the competition. We have fallen behind in the weight loss, but we are only at week #6, so we have 6 more weeks to pull it out. I KNOW we have the motivation to do it... I just hope the scale starts showing all of our hard work.

Maybe even more...

Hi, everyone! So... Tuesday posts usually reveal our weigh-in... and of course, remember the weigh-in tonight is a week ahead of the paper.

(Drum roll please)

I lost 5.5 pounds. Can you believe it? That means that I have lost 20.5 pounds so far. While it is true that I have bumped up my cardio, I want to give all of the glory to God. This morning during my bible study, God showed me the number 177. I kind of laughed it off just like Abraham did when God told him that Sarah would have a baby at their old age. I know that ANYTHING is possible with God and I give God all of the credit. God has showed me where there was time in my day to workout. God has helped me get through tough situations without making the wrong food choices. I am just so truly blessed that God is with me all of the way and I KNOW that God can give me the confidence to finish this competition strong. (Did I mention that I am in Seminary studying to get my Masters in Youth Ministry?)

Okay, enough about me, here is the weight loss for Week 5:

David Drayer: -0.5 lbs.
Richard Feld: -2.0 lbs.
Susan Feidelman: -1.0 lbs.
Jen Green: -1.5 lbs.
Tina Hardy: -2.0 lbs.

There was much disappointment this week. We expected to lose more, but slow and steady always wins the race. Maybe we are at a point where our bodies are waking up to what we are doing. And we need to jump start it again. I think back to before the competition... I would have given my first born to lose a pound in a week (maybe not, I really love my children) and we are still ALL losing weight. We cannot expect HUGE weight losses each week.

All I know is that I think we all can reach our goals. I really feel like I can reach my goal to lose 30 pounds in 12 weeks... and at this point, maybe even more.

An hour and two minutes later...

In case you forgot, the first challenge, the Germantown 5-miler, was this morning. And I am PROUD to announce that every single blue team member crossed the finish line. Yay!!!!!

It was a long 5 miles full of hills and little girls (the Girls on the Run 5k started at our 2 mile mark). I walked more than I wanted, but I finished in an hour and two minutes. I wanted to run the entire race and finish under an hour, but I am just pleased that I finished to my children and husband cheering me in at the finish.

As I figured, David led the blue team, followed by Rich, me, Susan and Tina, who came in at an hour and sixteen minutes. Benny, our trainer, continued with her energizer bunny performance and finished around forty minutes. The official race results have not been published yet, but I will be sure to post them when they do.

After I got home, my body ached. I took a twenty minute Jacuzzi bath and feel great now. Hopefully, I will be fully recovered by our workout on Monday. I am sure that Benny and Kim will continue to kick us into high gear. We are approaching our half way mark at this week's weigh-in and I cannot wait to see how well the blue team is accomplishing our goals. Team BLUE!

Half way there...

The last couple of workouts have been tough. I believe the trainers want to push us past our plateau points. On Monday, Eric stepped out with us and took us for a “ride” We began by running all of the stairs that Rio had to offer us. And if you haven’t been to Rio Sport & Health, you have no idea what I mean – there are tons of stairs. Next, Eric took us to a racquetball court where he had all types of strength and core training activities to complete. Benny was great with motivating us and even joining in on our circuit. At the end, even Benny got a little winded which made us all feel good – that the workout was even tough for Benny. Eric said that it was meant to be tough for anyone.

After our chant, “Team Blue”, Benny said that on Wednesday we would be running around the lake. So if you are out dining at one of Rio’s wonderful restaurants Wednesday night around 6 pm, be sure to cheer for us as we run by. Our first challenge, the Germantown 5 miler is this Saturday, so hopefully, tonight’s run will put it all in perspective for us.

So Week 4’s results are in:

David Drayer: -8.5 lbs.
Richard Feld: -5.0 lbs.
Susan Feidelman: -2.5 lbs.
Jen Green: -6.0 lbs.
Tina Hardy: -2.0 lbs.

And we won for week 4. Yay! David and I lead the week with the most weight loss and I slightly edged out Susan (by 1 pound) as the leader for the woman despite my trip to NJ. I am excited. Be sure to check it out on: http://www.gazettehealthychallenge.net/

At last night’s weigh-in, I reached my goal weight loss for the half way mark of 15 pounds. I am half way there to my goal of 30 pounds in 12 weeks. I was a little disappointed that I only lost 1.5 pounds despite picking up my cardio workouts. I need to look at the bigger picture though and dwell on the fact that I have lost 15 pounds in 4 weeks! Yay!

Results from Week 3

Did you read your paper on Wednesday?

Here are the results:

David Drayer: -0
Richard Feld: -3
Susan Feidelman: -1 (still leading all of the women)
Jen Green: -0 (I missed the weigh-in because of the forum)
Tina Hardy: -3

We did not win this week. I was totally bummed feeling that my missed weigh-in caused the team to fall behind, but the team did not make me feel bad.

I am ready to show the public my "big" weight loss in next week's paper, especially since I have been catching some heat for not losing any weight in this week's paper.

No letting up...

Even though we "won" this week, the trainers did not let up on us. In fact, they pushed us even harder. I felt like last night's workout was the toughest yet. When Kim and Benny said that we were done, all 5 of us just laid there. We were exhausted. We had been pushed to our limit. Kim said, "let's bring it in as a team over here" and I thought, "can I do it long distance?" After our quick, "Team Blue", Tina and I said at the exact same time, "Where's the elevator?" We could not bring our bodies down the stairs to leave. Of course we managed since there was not an elevator, but had there been one; I promise I would have taken it down one floor.

First they broke us up in two (random) groups. Rich and Tina went to do 20 minutes of cardio on the treadmill and elliptical, while, Susan, David and I did the weight training. The weight training consisted of: squats while lifting weight with our arms straight out in front of us for a minute, in a squat position doing rows with our weights and then straight out to our sides, push-ups on the bench, hip lifts (or something along those lines) with us laying on the big balls and lifting both of our legs straight up and down slowly, side squats with a rubber-band around our knees, and finally wall sits. We did two reps of this and then we switched with Rich and Tina.

I had thought the cardio part would be easier, but after I did the elliptical for 15 minutes, Benny put me on the treadmill at 10% incline at 3.5 speed level. I felt like I was going to fall off. I started to run on it and Kim said to walk. I could not imagine walking that fast. After about 5 minutes, I felt like I was getting a "charlie horse" in my right calf, so Benny lowered the incline to 5%. After 20 minutes I felt good and knew we were done, but we still had our AB workout.

For the Ab workout: we laid on our backs in the "pencil" position and with weighted ball lifted up and touched our toes and rolled back down, sat up with our knees bent and moved the weighted ball form hip to hip, laid back on our elbows and did scissors kicks, and finally a plank each for a minute. We did two sets of these.

Can you see why we were tired? I guess there is no letting up - even if we are in the lead.

16.5 pounds away...

Okay, so tonight's weigh-in was AWESOME! I lost a total of 6 pounds. Let me just add a disclaimer that I was unable to weign-in last week. But still, I was able to lose weight while away from the food, trainers, and my support network. Wahoo! The team did great too, but since we are a week ahead, I will wait to announce those results until next week.

Our weigh-in tonight was hosted by StretchAlicious and they gave us all awesome pants with a big blue daisy on one leg. They are cute. StretchAlicious has a cute little boutique off of Tuckerman Lane in the Cabin John Center. I am excited to lose weight to be able to wear some of their cute tops. They would fit now, but I would just feel uncomfortable.

Diet-to-Go as always provided a nice layout of healthy food and Honest Tea gave each of us a case of tea. I will let you know how it tastes soon.

Well, I better hit the sack so I can hit the gym in the morning. I am so motivated right now. I cannot believe that I am 16.5 pounds away from my goal weight loss of 30 lbs in 12 weeks. I really, REALLY think I can do it.

I found my way back home.

Greetings, from Maryland!

I finally made it back to the nest. And boy, Kim and Benny had a workout waiting for me (us). On Friday we did elliptical sprints and bicycle sprints and finished with an ab workout. My heart rate actually reached 189 at one point so you know that I was sweating.

For the elliptical sprints, we put it at level at 5 and "ran" for a 1 and a half minutes and then "sprinted" as fast as we could for 30 seconds at level 7. The first one wasn't so bad, but by the time we got to # 5+, I was hurting. We had a minute and a half "rest" between each sprint, but we were still working out at level 5.

After too many reps of that to count, we moved to the bikes and did the same thing except our recover time was 3 minutes. I could barely move when we climbed the stairs up to do our ab workout.

We did inverted sit-ups (moving our legs up and down 15 times) and bicycle sit-ups. They both felt easy at the time, but I can still feel the pain in my abs today. Finally we stood back to back with a partner and passed a heavy ball around to each other from side to side. I got dizzy doing this, but felt it in my obliques.

I can only imagine what tomorrow's workout will be like... say a prayer for us!