New Year, Same Resolution…

Posted on January 13, 2012 at 7:46 am by FoxBeHungry

Coconut Chocolate Chip Clif Bars (Box of 12):
$14.00

Sixteen ounces of Go Chia! Chia Seeds:
$8.99

Blender Bottle (20 oz.):
$6.00

BootcampSF class in Golden Gate Park with 12 new found friends and an instructor directing you to health with fun exercises 3-4 times a week for 1 hour at a time:
$$$Priceless$$$

Okay, so priceless is a bit inaccurate. There are indeed prices for BootCampSF (Click here for rates or email info@bootcampsf.com), but the feeling you get is totally priceless!

I’m here as part of my New Year’s resolution to get into better shape. Honestly, it’s the same resolution that I’ve had every year for the past 2 or 3 or 10 years. But there is one glaring difference between this year and all those other years. This time… I MEAN IT!! Okay, I admit that I’ve also said that before with varying results… but seriously… I MEAN IT!

Another difference between this New Year’s fitness resolution and every other past New Year’s fitness resolution is that I have a wedding to attend at the end of April and it happens to be my own!! So what can I do to ensure that I am in tip top shape for one of the most important days of my life? Better question is “what am I not going to do?”

Clif Bars of varying sizes(variation is the spice of life)? Chia seeds (flax is so 2011, but I’ll try that out too)? Blender Bottles(for protein shakes instead of liquor…in addition to liquor)? Head lamp(winter means a lack of daylight)? Running gloves(Yes, I have specific gloves for running. Well actually, they are more for when we stop at some random spot in the park and we have to go to the ground. After a while picking pebbles out of my hands just gets tedious, hence the need for running gloves.) ?

You name it, I’m going to try it. Heck, I even bought a copy of Men’s Health to see if their “SPECIAL LOSE-YOUR-GUT ISSUE” will actually help me lose my gut. I’m willing to try anything short of starvation or cleanses where I have to drink mixtures of lemon juice and cayenne pepper.

If it means no more fried chicken binges, regular cheeseburgers as opposed to double cheeseburgers, saying no to free food(usually in candy, donut or potato chip form), then I’m going to do it. This is the year of health and I mean it. Really. I do. Remember I mentioned that whole getting married thing? WOOOHOOO to fitness!!

As a thank you for making it through my first blog post of 2012, take a look at the picture below. That’s right, Sports Basement is having what I believe is their first sale ever. Usually, as a member of BootCampSF we get 10% off our purchase, but from now until the first big snow fall, everybody gets 20% off their purchase (with a few exceptions)!!!! Looks like snow maybe next week so get out there while you can! And just in case you were wondering if that was 20% in addition to the 10% off that we already get, then the answer is unfortunately no, but hey, 20% is 20%. Happy shopping for all your fitness needs!

***Posted by foxbehungry***

‘Twas the night before BootCamp….

Posted on December 23, 2011 at 10:26 pm by FoxBeHungry

***Have a good holiday season!! Hope you find the little diddy below entertaining before you head off to parts unknown! –posted by foxbehungry–***

‘Twas the night before BootCamp and all through the house,
nothing was stirring, not even a mouse.

But then the phone rang at 9pm and it was one of my crew,
turns out a party was afoot and they were serving more than just mountain dew.

Wine, beer, vodka and cheese were in available in much excess,
and due to weeks of BootCamp, I had less fat to absorb and handle my body’s distress.

One in the morning swung around and I was in quite a state of inebriation,
how in the world would I make it to 6am BootCamp with any sense of coordination?

After falling asleep for a few hours, my 5:30 am alarm rung quite loudly,
after a few minutes battling cottonmouth, I decided to go to class quite proudly.

Could I make it through 60 minutes of pushups, pullups, hills, sprints and more,
that I did not know but I knew my absence would drive me crazy to the core.

I hate to disappoint my instructor and classmates, so even though I was sweating liquor,
I was determined to jump jacks and jump rope with vigor (and without getting sicker).

Though my performance was not my best and my countenance was quite meek,
at the end of the allotted hour I was happy to keep intact my attendance streak.

And through the pain of the hangover in the misty early morn, when all is said and done,
I’m always quite happy to make it out Golden Gate Park for a harrowing Bootcamp run!!

Accidental Holiday Binging Anyone?

Posted on December 22, 2011 at 4:44 am by FoxBeHungry

The holidays are surrounding us on all sides, and along with holidays come all sorts of parties to celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice and New Year’s Day(also for a little added random knowledge, January 1st is also considered the birthday of every competition race horse in the northern hemisphere). In addition to those traditional holiday parties, there are work holiday parties, end of the fiscal year parties, cookie exchange parties, white elephant parties, and heck I’ve even been to a baby shower this month (seriously, are dudes supposed to be going to those things?).

The one thing that is common to all these parties, besides that they are parties, is the presence of ample amounts of food and booze(okay, not so much booze at the cookie exchange, but there is a surprising amount of alcohol flowing at a white elephant). As the year comes to a close and we look to see how our fitness goals have been met through bootcamp, many of us look to our handy dandy scale to reaffirm our belief that we’ve done a good job forgetting that we’ve impeded our progress with some good natured accidental holiday binging. Let me tell you this before you step on that scale… STOP!!!

Before you step on the scale think about how you feel. Easier to breathe when you run? Pants looser? Is a belt just a fashion accessory or is it actually keeping your pants up? I ask these questions because for me they have all been yes. I stepped on a scale Saturday morning and I was around 181.8 pounds. Monday morning and four parties later (baby shower, white elephant, kid’s birthday party and Benihana birthday dinner) and I was at 187.8 pounds. I gained six pounds in 48 hours!!! I’m not going to lie, I panicked a little bit. All the hard work of bootcamp and I had ruined it in 2 days!! If you’ve had moments like that, remember that the scale is not the end all and be all(I feel that is a repeating theme in my blog posts). I repeat, don’t trust just the scale, go back to the beginning of this paragraph and ask yourself those three questions(or questions of a similar ilk):

Easier to breathe when you run?

Pants looser?

Is a belt just a fashion accessory or is it actually keeping your pants up?

Answer yes to any of those questions(or of any of your own personal questions)? If so, then ignore the number on the scale for the time being. After a tremendous weekend of weight gain, let your body process the food and alcohol you’ve ingested. According to my friends over at WebMD (I don’t actually have friends there, but I have visited their website), part of the digestive process includes going through the large intestine where food debris (“food debris” sounds so much nicer that the other words I could’ve used) may spend a few days traversing on its way out of your body.

So the moral of the story? There are few actually:

First, try to go to parties with moderation on your mind. Don’t drink and eat everything!

Second, if you have troubles with moderation like I do, don’t step on a scale right away!! If you do, do it with the mindset that the weight you see is not a true indicator of your health. What is an indicator of is that you should should’ve looked at lesson number one and practiced a little moderation(trust me, i’m not judging. If you think I am, go back to the part of this post where I say I gained 6 pounds in 2 days!!).

Third, continue what you’ve been doing to get in shape and healthy. Keep hitting up your bootcamp classes and wait one week after the holiday parties for your body to cleanse itself and get used to your regular food patterns (assuming that binging is not your regular food pattern!). After that week, I’m betting the scale won’t be as big an enemy as you or I think it is.

With all that being said…. HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

****any questions or comments can be directed to the facebook page or directly to me(fellow bootcamp-er) at foxbehungry@gmail.com or twitter.com/foxbehungry****

What do you want out of BootCampSF? 32/30s are my goal!

Posted on December 2, 2011 at 8:42 am by FoxBeHungry

Why? Why do we do it? Why on earth do we drag ourselves outside to exercise with our fellow BootCampSF-ers when we could be out eating or drinking or sleeping??

Each of us have our own goal. For me, the goal is to reach the weight I was before I met my fiancee. [Beginning of Biology Interlude: If you are like me and have trouble remembering the difference between fiancee and fiance, just remember the Rule of X which I just made up. Girls have 2 X chromosomes so they have 2 Es and boys have 1 X chromosome (and 1 Y) hence just 1E. Being the dude, I'm the fiance. End of Biology Interlude.] Prior to meeting my fiancee I was 172 pounds and fit comfortably in 32/30 jeans.

Ninety-two days ago I was at 187 pounds and I was fitting quite comfortably in 34/30s. That day I began Mission 32/30: get to my pre-fiancee weight of 172 pounds and fitting easily into a pair of 32/30 jeans. I’m proud to say that after 92 days of BootCampSF I have dropped 4.9 pounds down to 182.1 pounds! Furthermore, my BMI has dropped from 31.6(Obese) to 30.8 (still obese, just less so[note: I hate BMI but for some reason I can't resist reporting it]). And those jeans? Well I’m still in 34/30s but I need a belt!!

So if i do the calculation right, I lost approximately 0.38 pounds a week. At this pace I’ll have fulfilled Mission 32/30 in about 180 more days. If you add it up that is a total of 9 months.

NINE MONTHS!??!!? Totally doable. It takes a lot of patience, but it is totally doable. Through a combination of exercise and eating junk in moderation (i.e. 1 cupcake instead of 3 cupcakes and a cheeseburger) meeting my goal should be met with relative ease. I’ve had friends who’ve had babies in that same amount of time and I’ve been repeatedly been told that being pregnant for 9 months is definitely more difficult that my mission. Just a little tip, DO NOT ever compare losing weight as being harder than giving birth. Not even as a joke. Ever.

Wow, I really do ramble don’t I? Anyways, with Thanksgiving already in the past, I just have to make it by the gamut(first time I’ve ever used that word) of winter holidays and the new year without having a major backslide. I mean, 3 months are done and I only have 6 more months to go. That’s right, I said ‘only.’ Totally doable.

If you have any questions or want to compare notes on goals, feel free to contact me at foxbehungry@gmail.com or twitter.com/foxbehungry.

Have a good workout!

High Altitude Running: Thanksgiving Weekend

Posted on November 28, 2011 at 12:55 am by BCSF

Workouts while traveling are notoriously challenging. If you travel for work, you’re busy with deadlines and possibly jet lagged. If you’re traveling for leisure or simply to spend time with family, you are limited with time: you did just travel however far/long to spend time with them right? But the bottom line for any type of travel is the same: you are without your typical workout resources (e.g. if you’re a cyclist what do you do without your bike?).

This Thanksgiving weekend I experienced some of these obstacles myself while in Taos, New Mexico. Besides the lovely company I was keeping, Taos is beautiful, serene and clocks in around the 7,000 elevation foot mark. It’s most definitely high desert. Our house is significantly far from the city center and rests somewhere around the 7500-foot elevation mark. It’s high. For reference, it’s higher than many of the main destinations of Lake Tahoe.

Being far outside the main part of town and needing to share a car with the family, of course if I wanted to workout, I need to take my workout outside on my own terms. Given my background, it’s generally not something I view as a workout deal-breaker.

My first morning here, I mapped out an “easy” 3.5 mile route.

That road doesn’t look like much of a hill, but I can assure you when you’re at 7500 feet, a slight incline feels slightly Mt. Everest-ish. Basically, for all of the run, it sort of felt like someone was standing on my chest. While running. My lungs felt h-e-a-v-y and my breathe was quicker than usual. Very early on in the run I decided that it was not as easy of a run as I’d thought it would be. See above: “easy 3.5 mile run”.

It was the hardest run I’d done in months.

I completed this run 3 times while in Taos and it didn’t feel all that much easier each time I went out (and on the 2nd run, the windchill temperature was hovering around 16 degrees!). I watched my pace, though not as religiously as I might at home, and it wasn’t as slow as I felt. But it didn’t really matter: it just felt harder.

And it was humbling.

It reminded me of how it feels when something that feels “easy” to you much of the time, feels hard again. It was a good reminder for many things: to not skip my own workouts even when it feels “hard” and to never forget how hard exercise can feel. And how it has felt for myself in the past. It’s a good feeling to have.

I hope you all had wonderful Thanksgiving workouts!

See you outside,

-Catherine Wohlwend, General Manager @ BootCampSF

P.S.

If you want to read a little bit more about why running at elevation is “hard”, here are a few resources:

Running Times / Trail Running Article

Wikipedia/ “Altitude Training”

Jumping Rope isn’t Just for Kids or Boxers!

Posted on November 18, 2011 at 8:01 am by FoxBeHungry

A couple of years ago I picked up a jump rope for the first time in over a decade. I was jumping super high to make sure I got over the rope, jumping off both feet because if I didn’t I surely wouldn’t get into a rhythm and my arms were moving in large cirlces to make sure the rope got around me. The result was me not making it three jumps without stepping on the rope. I did three sets of three minutes and they were excruciating. The next morning I woke up with the shin splints and sore calves that were nothing I had experienced before. Just nine total minutes of jumping and I was out of commission for two days. And to be completely honest it was much less than nine minutes because I kept stepping on the stupid rope!!!

How the heck to kids and boxers do it? Kids are happy go lucky and it is a game. For boxers it just looks look like the simplest thing ever to do. For me it was PAIN! After seeing people jump rope with what I can only assume was better form than me, I can offer a few novice, non-professional, rookie tips on jumping rope relatively pain free:

1. Get the right length! If your rope is too short, make a couple of knots. If it is too long, get a new rope. I like to jump so that my elbows stay in nice and tight to my body so my arms aren’t flailing all over the place. Also, the ceiling in my apartment is pretty low so i like the rope to just barely get over my head. This also lets me get more rotations in, hence keeping me quick on my feet (at least that’s what I tell myself).

2. Don’t jump off both feet all the time! Jumping off both feet with the same force all the time gets you tired real quick and you end up stepping on the rope a lot. By stepping on the rope a lot and having to start over, it cuts into your actually jumping time. I prefer to go with the one two three four method demonstrated in the following video. click here

3. Practice Practice Practice! Get a rope and just start jumping. In your apartment, on the street corner, in a park or wherever you can. A jump rope is very portable and I know from experience that it is allowed on airplanes(no funny story to add, though it feels like there should be one; apologies for any disappointment at lack of anecdotal story). Eventually you can do crossovers, skipping, high knees and backward jumping. I’m still working on the backward jumping myself.

For a demonstration, check out some videos on the Facebook page or Google or YouTube some people to see how they jump rope. Or just pop in any boxing movie and you are sure to find a decent jump roping sequence. The semi-low budget movie The Hammer, starring Adam Carolla, has a very good jump roping sequence. Even if you aren’t a Carolla fan, you’ll be a fan of this jump roping sequence. If you see me around, just ask i’ll let you borrow my copy!

For more tips, please ask your BootCampSF instructor. If you have any questions, feel free to comment at foxbehungry@gmail.com, twitter.com/foxbehungry, this page or the Facebook page.

Have a good workout!

Here are links to the videos on Facebook (I’m the one in the yellow shirt in case you were wondering what I looked like):

Jump Rope Too Long?

Jump Rope Too Short?

1-2, 3-4 Jump Roping Rhythm

Jumping, Skipping, High-kneeing etc… Rope

5 “Eat This – Not That” Ideas for Thanksgiving

Posted on November 15, 2011 at 3:01 am by Erin

1600 Calories? Let's Rethink This...

I stumbled across this very scary infographic tonight that illustrates how much we tend to eat at Thanksgiving dinner and how long you will need to workout in the gym to burn off the calories. I generally like to live in ignorant bliss about such things but being told that the typical diner on Thanksgiving will eat more than 1600 calories is a bit sobering. Although, historically my boyfriend and his brother have competed to make the most absurdly packed platter of food and then proceeded to lick the plate clean so really I shouldn’t be surprised.

I love pie, mashed potatoes, and turkey as much as the next girl but perhaps we might want to consider switching out a few of those classic dinner dishes with a slightly more healthy alternative?

A heaping bowl of cranberry sauce is a must-have for most people. I grew up eating the crazy stuff that comes out of a can and then graduated to making my own, but most homemade recipes call for at least a cup of sugar to balance out the tartness of the ruby red berries. This recipe for Raw Cranberry Sauce from Elena’s Pantry uses a blend of fresh orange, lemon, and dates to naturally sweeten the dish. Very intriguing!

I’m the very bad (or good depending upon how you look at it) guest who brings the super addictive cheese laden artichoke dip to all the holiday parties. But I think I may have to try this Edamame Guacamole and see if miss all of that feta and parmesan or not.

One of my favorite thanksgiving dishes is sweet potato casserole. It might as well be dessert though, what with all of the mini-marshmallows and brown sugar piled onto the poor vegetables. But I really love sweet potatoes. They’re an absolute must for me on holidays. Perhaps a roasted version with savory mushrooms and a sprinkling of pretty parsley would be a better option though?

Stuffing is yet another side dish that I can wax poetically about for paragraphs. Sure, there are vegetables in there but I have pretty vivid memories of helping my grandmother toast and cut loaves and loaves of bread into bite sized pieces back in the day. After all of these early bootcamp mornings I don’t really want to overdo it completely. So I might be persuaded to exchange my stuffing for a few scoops of this dazzlingly colored Red Quinoa with Butternut Squash, Cranberries, and Pecans.

Confession time: I don’t even like pumpkin pie. There I said it. So this low-calorie Frozen Pumpkin Mousse kills two birds with one stone.

In reality, we will all probably eat and drink a little too much next Thursday, but I hope the above ideas inspire your cooking a bit and if you do have three slices of pie and half the turkey don’t worry — the new session of bootcamp starts the following Monday.

Thanksgiving Week Workouts Schedule

Posted on November 15, 2011 at 12:08 am by BCSF

We hope that you have warm and delicious plans for next week (Thanksgiving week!). If you’re staying in San Francisco for the holiday, we have a very full menu of classes to serve you all next week:

GOLDEN GATE PARK

Monday, 11/21
6am: Tracy, Andrew, Brandon
7am: Tracy, Andrew, Brandon
8:30am: Tracy, Brandon
9:30am: Tracy, Brandon

4:30pm: Tyler
5:30pm: Tyler
6:30pm: Tyler

Tuesday, 11/22
6am: Tracy, Andrew, Brandon
7am: Tracy, Andrew, Brandon
8:30am: Tracy, Brandon
9:30am: Tracy, Brandon

4:30pm: Tyler Dalbey
5:30pm: Tyler Dalbey
6:30pm: Tyler Dalbey

Wednesday, 11/23

No Classes @ Golden Gate Park

Thanksgiving Day/ Thursday, 11/24

7am: Tracy
8:30am: Tracy, Tyler
9:30am: Tracy, Tyler

SOUTH BEACH

Monday, 11/21
6am: Brooks
7am: Brooks

Tuesday, 11/22 (18th + Arkansas meeting point)
6am: Brooks
7am: Brooks

MARINA

Monday, 11/21
6am: Tyler
7am: Tyler
8:30am: Tyler

Tuesday, 11/22 (Lyon Street stairs meeting point)
6am: Tyler
7am: Tyler
8:30am: Tyler

Wednesday, 11/23
6am: Tyler
7am: Tyler
8:30am: Tyler

EMBARCADERO

Monday, 11/21
4:30pm: Brooks
5:30pm: Brooks
6:30pm: Brooks

Tuesday, 11/22
4:30pm: Brooks
5:30pm: Brooks
6:30pm: Brooks

DOLORES PARK

Monday, 11/21
6am: Valerie, Jodie
7am: Valerie, Jodie

Tuesday, 11/22
6am: Valerie, Jodie
7am: Valerie, Jodie

Wednesday, 11/23
6am: Valerie, Jodie
7am: Valerie, Jodie

REGISTRATION INFO

You can “add-on” No Excuses Week to your November 28th Session Fee for just $20 extra! Just choose that option from the drop-down menu when registering for the Nov. 28th session. Or you can drop-in for $8 for each single class during No Excuses Week.

A few notes on registration:

1. If you register for Nov. 28th Session + No Excuses Week Add-On for $20, you will just register once.

2. If you’re just registering for No Excuses Week as drop-ins + the Nov. 28th Session, you will need to do so as separate transactions (register twice!).

3. Friends, family and loved ones are definitely welcome to these workouts! Particularly, bring ‘em out to Thanksgiving Day workouts at Golden Gate Park!

The Sun Shines on Munday!

Posted on November 11, 2011 at 5:52 am by FoxBeHungry

***posted by foxbehungry***

Yay!! Daylight savings has come and gone and the morning BootCampSF-ers may still see the stars and the moon at 6am, but by 6:30 the sun is out and headlamps are no longer needed. If any of you are morning runners, now is a great time. If you are a late afternoon or evening BootCamperSF-er it’s probably time to buy some reflective gear or find a morning BootCampSF-er and borrow their headlamp for the next few weeks(months?)!

One drawback to working out in the morning is my fellow BootCamp-ers (I’m dropping the SF for the rest of this blog because I got tired of pressing the shift key for the “S” and “F” and I kept missing the dash before the “ers”), can see how haggard and sad I look at being up at 6am in the morning. On the other hand, by 7am I’m a happy smiling camper of the boot variety and on Thursdays I’m even happier because now we can do Thursdays with Munday with sunshine!

If you have had the chance to catch each weekly edition of Thursdays with Munday, you’ll see that we started videoing in the light, then it just started getting darker and darker until last week when I’m not even sure what Andrew was doing! If you missed an edition or two, today is your lucky day because collected below is every single Thursday with Munday to date. Thanks again to Andrew Munday, one of the morning BootCampSF instructors in Golden Gate Park. (and in there is one edition of Thursdays with Munday on Saturday featuring Jodie Rodriguez).

Um…. well this is kind of embarrassing. In this spot you should be seeing all the videos but unfortunately each video is too big to uploaded! So instead, here is the the next best thing, a link to each video in its location on Facebook! Click away!! All are SFW (which i learned means Safe For Work).

September 8, 2011-Golden Gate Park Pushups with a Partner Using a Bench

September 15, 2011-Partner Squats with a Jump!

September 17, 2011-35 Quick Pushups with Jodie on a Saturday at Crissy Field

September 22, 2011-Wheelbarrows with a Partner and Medicine Ball

September 29, 2011-Situps using a Resistance Band

October 6, 2011-Partner Situps with a Medicine Balls

October 13, 2011-Partner Pushups and Dips

October 20, 2011-Kettlebell Lunge and Curl (this is where it started getting dark)

October 27, 2011-Situps incorporating a Medicine Ball Toss and Catch (even darker)

November 4, 2011 (Friday Edition because we weren’t ready on Thursday and also the Darkest Edition!)-Pushups and Dips using a Railing and a Partner

November 10, 2011-Suitcase with a Leg-Lift in the Sun Light!!! (and also the most recent edition of Thursdays with Munday)

Stay tuned next week for another edition of Thursdays with Munday AND possibly some amateur jump-roping by the guy behind camera.

Questions or comments can be directed here, the Facebook page, info@bootcampsf.com, foxbehungry@gmail.com or twitter.com/foxbehungry.

***posted by foxbehungry***

The Hills Are Alive With the Sounds of Sneakers

Posted on November 8, 2011 at 10:14 pm by Erin

Approximately 96 factors need to be at their ultimate level for me to be able to run for exercise. For instance, my shoes need to be tied just so, socks a certain fabric, it can’t be too hot or too cold, I need my iPod, my workout clothing can’t be too big or too small etc… Yes, I do in fact realize this is a fantastic array of excuses, but I’m not one of those people who thinks running is fun. For me running is right up there with going to the dentist, shopping at the mall on Christmas Eve, and public speaking. But I don’t want it to be.

In the past I’ve given the running thing an honest go. My boyfriend tried to get me into it. He even bought me this insanely cute Nano a few years ago and had it engraved with my nickname and a very “ra ra” sentiment. I ran and walked and ran and walked and huffed and puffed and somehow managed to be able to run 2 miles without stopping once in awhile (when all of the above criteria were met, of course) but then it would get cold and dark and finally it would snow (this being Boston and all) and I’d hibernate and half heartedly drag myself to the gym to read trashy novels on the elliptical here and there. Then when spring came I had to inevitably start the awful process over again. Run, walk, repeat.

So when I signed up for BootCamp and saw the box inquiring if I could run a mile I suffered some sort of delusion of grandeur and said yes. Then I proceeded to frantically run on the treadmill at the gym to make sure I could. But running on the treadmill is nothing at all like running outside and it is lightyears away from running in Potrero Hill.

Wikipedia opens it’s article on the area by saying “it’s a hilly neighborhood.” To which I can only respond, “Are you kidding me?!” I’m pretty sure most of this part of the city has a steeper incline than the mom and pop “ski slope” in my hometown. Not to mention that I had dinner at a friend’s home in Potrero recently and had to take off my heels before I even got out of the cab so I could get to her front door.

If you’re from this area and grew up running these small, let’s face it, mountains, then you probably don’t think anything of bounding up and down these streets like an elegant gazelle. I, on the other hand, dread our Tuesday running focused BootCamp sessions. This is the day that gets in my head like no other.

Right from the get go I start out behind everyone. I’m slow. Super slow and have seriously questionable stamina on straightaways so as soon as my legs come in contact with any degree of incline my brain pretty much screams STOP. I drag myself as quickly as possible up and then down to our usual first meeting point where there just happens to be a railing perfect for doing many many sets of horizontal pull-ups interspersed with a run up a small hill that I’d much rather tackle with snow boots and a sled.

If you’re very lucky you won’t have to run up the picturesque staircase (that never ends) and happens to also be strategically nestled in-between a number of sleepy homes across from the makeshift concrete gym. It’s like the Bermuda Triangle of BootCamp. I usually have just enough time to think some very dark thoughts about how much I hate Tuesdays and then we’re off again.

Sometimes we’re supposed to run up and down Wisconsin Street, a very long hill that that meanders and tricks you into thinking you’ve made it to the top only to realize that there are at least two more blocks to go. Other times we have the distinct pleasure of pushing our fellow boot campers up another steep hill backwards, sometimes we might carry a medicine ball up a hill, and other times you may just be asked to do walking lunges for a very VERY long time. And just when you think this crazy outing will never end Brooks sends us all over to the Potrero Hill Playground.

This colorful and cheerful place serves at the backdrop for the final few minutes of class which are generally spent doing things that make my nonexistent abs hurt and holding plank on very shaky arms. Then it’s over and I can hardly believe we’ve only been galavanting about the neighborhood for an hour.

My walk back home takes around 20 minutes. This means that I have plenty of time to forget all about how much I hate those hills and how great I feel. The meditative hike to my apartment does unfortunately also remind me that I inadvertently left that cute iPod in my jacket pocket and washed it a few weeks ago. It still plays but only holds about 20 minutes of charge thus making it, now and forever, impossible for all of the so-called “must have” criteria I described above from ever happening again. Yet, I still somehow managed to make it through class without extra accessories. Hmm… maybe that means I’m getting better at this Tuesday hill thing?