Day 45

After a 15 minute warm-up on the arc trainer, I headed into a not-so-vacant workout classroom to do the 45. But 2 witnesses is better than 30, so I went ahead.

You know how you have to pump yourself up to jump off the high dive or some other daunting thing? Some days, that's how it is with the burpees. I stand there in front of the mirror getting myself ready. "Okay boys...okay boys!" a la Lane Frost in 8 Seconds. So after several deep breaths, off I went. I didn't need as many breaks today -- some days are just less difficult than others. (I will not call this easy.)
Then I went to yoga. Apparently, it was Power Yoga -- didn't find that out till I was in the middle of it. And the instructor was not the relaxing, soothing, speaker you would expect. I think she must have been a tour guide at Disney World before this. "And now we will move into the Down Dog Ride, but first take a moment to enjoy Space Mountain pose." Plus, she was very concerned with the non-relaxing music playing in the spin room on the other side of the wall. Honey, I can't even hear that Lady Gaga song you speak of. I am too busy trying to keep "our" legs in Ardha Mandalasana so "we" don't fall over and make a thud and disturb the spinners next door."

Good workout. Can't wait to do it all again (+1) tomorrow.

Day 44

I seemed to have a lot more breaks among the 44 burpees today! I don't know what the deal was! Maybe it was that my chest was not restrained -- that's right, I forgot a sports bra again!!! Who does that?! That is a vital part of a woman's workout attire! And my regular bra was not nearly as supportive as the one I wore the last time I forgot the sports bra. I had planned to try a little running today -- uh uh...with all that bouncing...that was not happening. So off to the elliptical I went. Gluteal course. It burned -- but The Office took my mind off of it. Dwight was fired and went to work at Staples where he creeped out the customers and Andy was extremely annoying and Jim and Pam put his cell phone in the ceiling and then Jim admitted to his girlfriend that he still had feelings for Pam. I love a good love story. :)

In other wardrobe news, I saw a gray thong on an enviable bootay in the locker room. Guess who? Helicopter girl! This was after my workout. I almost walked right out of that locker room & back up to the workout area, but then I decided to just go home and eat supper. Day 44 down.

Day 43

Rain rain go away, come again another day (or don't). No breaking up the burpees today. So off to the gym I went. And what did I forget today? Socks! MMMmmm...can't wait to open that locker tomorrow!

So I decided to beef up my cardio routine before I got to the burpees. I had a trainer once who had me do 30-30s -- 30 seconds of sprinting on the elliptical, then 30 seconds of rest speed. But it was more like 30-60 or 30-90, and I am totally blaming that on Mike Holmes. Holmes on Homes...LOVE him! He is just a knight in shining armor to these folks! We even had on matching earrings today...So, he was soooo distracting! It wasn't until the commercials came on that I was snapped out of my trance and was able to keep up the 30/30.

Then off to the not-in-use workout classroom. You know what I noticed today? If I stand at the back of the room to do the burpees, then when my shirt flies up and I see my tummy in the mirror it looks pretty flat! (Standing close to the mirror is not so forgiving.) 43 burpees later (and all the abs and arms my workout buddy forced me to do) and I was outta there.

Later on I checked my email and saw a chain from the Challenger and other Challengees. Someone did the math: We have completed 996 out of 5100 burpees as of today. Almost half way through in days but not even 20% in actual burpees!!!!!!! NOooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Day 42

My feet huuuuuuuuuuuurrrrt... You know when you wear high heals for a long time and the balls of your feet burn? even the day after? Well, that's what was going on. But I pushed on! I will give credit to the girl-in-awesome-shape-wearing-the-huge-helicopter-pilot-headphones. She just looks so good. Definitely makes me want to work out hard. So I ran/walked for about 30min on the treadmill while helicopter girl worked it out on the arc trainer. Then I went off and burpeed. I came out of the spin room thinking That was a pretty good workout. Think I'll call it a day. But helicopter girl was still at it! She had moved on from the arc trainer, so I thought I would give it a try. Thankfully, hgtv came through for me with The Unsellables. I stayed on for 30 minutes just to see the reveal! (By the way, the homeowners had no clue -- we've lived here for 23 years, and it's perfect! What buyer wouldn't want 18 rugs piled on top of each other in a room with dark faux paneling and a million pictures of our kids from the 80s and fake greenery everywhere?) Well, she fixed 'em right up! And off I went, 42 burpees under my belt.

Day 41

Well, yet again, I was forced into doing all 41 jump/pushup/jump/jump/repeat/burn thighs/pull up pants/catch my breath/do again at once today. Today, I did bring a sports bra -- but that was it. I wore the dirty clothes from yesterday -- they weren't that dirty. I mean, I was going to get sweaty anyway. So I did them all. But before that I spent 30 minutes on the elliptical. It was sooo hard! And by sooo hard I mean that it was sooo hard to choose between watching How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and 90210 (Original version - college years, you know when Donna lived at the beach? and the wife from Scrubs was Brandon's girlfriend?) Anyway, it was such a tough choice! I ended up going with the movie but the treadmill in front of me had 90210 on and no one was on the treadmill, so I could kind of watch both! Win!

So tonight is a big night out! But I am scared for tomorrow - my future 42 burpees will be haunting every sip I take.

Day 40

Well it rained today. It was raining this morning so I didn't want to go outside and get half the day's burpees overwith pre-gym. So it was back to doing all of them coninuously. :(

So my day has gone like this: wake up, see that it is raining, cry myself back to sleep because I cannot split up the torture today, get up, study, shower, go to school, study, go to gym, study some more. Okay, now back to the gym part. I FORGOT A SPORTS BRA!!!!! For any of you who have not been paying attention to what a burpee entails, this is what it entails: JUMPING! Jumping without a sports bra is no good. (But at least I wasn't oustide w/o a sports bra--think of the pointing that could have gone on then.) But I wasn't about to go back home for one, so I tightened my boot straps, er, bra straps, and headed out of the locker room to get on with Day 40. Guess what! It wasn't bad at all! (I'm talking about the regular bra part, not the doing the burpees part.) I don't know how, but I managed to get through it without flopping all over the place!

Day 39

Today was 39. The first day I split up the burpees. Up until today, I did all burpees continuously - albeit with a few 10 - 60 second breaks among them. Yesterday I was talking to my sweet baby, and I said, "Sweet Baby, 38 burpees was so hard today! I did not like doing them!" And he said, "I think you are going to have to start splitting them up, you are getting up there in the numbers. And you are looking smokin, too!" (Okay, maybe he didn't say the last part, but maybe he thought it! huh? huh?) So I said, "Sweet Baby, you are so smart! I am so glad I am marrying you!"

So today was the day. I would split up the burpees and life would be good! So I took myself down the block to the park and did a little walk/run around it. After a few laps (it's a small park), I decided it was time to get started. If you read the first post, you know how I feel about doing burpees outside in public. But yall, it's time to suck it up! I can't keep up these high numbers without splitting them, and I don't want to go to the gym twice! Well, pretty much every reason why I don't like doing them outside in public existed today (my t-shirt kept flying up, my pants sagged, a little kid on a tri-cycle pointed at me [well, maybe not, but he was in the park at the same time and could easily have pointed at me without me knowing because I purposefully faced the other direction], but you know what, it wasn't that bad. I mean, they don't take sooo long. And I was over halfway done with the day's burpees! (I did 20.)

So home, shower, get ready for class. And damnit! I have to pack gym clothes and sneakers and my heavy text book for the night class b/c since I have to go to the gym I won't have time to come home in between classes and get this humongous book. That is 2 bags! which doesn't sound like a lot but i really thought it was at the time and now i think maybe i was overreacting. Anyway, I did not want to walk 1.3 miles to school carrying TWO bags. (I think putting it in all caps makes it sound a lot worse! like how I felt about it!) How will I ever get to school with TWO bags? ooh ooh...call for a ride! So I did -- thank you friend for coming to pick me up!

Long story short -- I went to class, went to the gym, ellipticalled for 30 min, did the 19 burpees I had left (in the privacy of the not-in-use spinning room), hated every second of it, somehow found the motivation to do some crunches and strength training, went to my night class (where we did not use the humongous book 1 time!), came home still hating the burpees and decided to share my hatred with the world. Day 39.

(Day 39 was Thursday...just posted late!)

Why the heck did I sign up for this!!!!!!!!!!

Let me get you up to speed. A couple summers ago I enrolled in a bootcamp fitness class. I loved it! It was hard, but it was a great workout and it was nice to have people/friends to exercise with. Well, I now live out of state, so I don't go to that bootcamp anymore. But I still get emails from the leader of that bootcamp. She sends out newsletters -- "exercise of the month," "recipe of the month," "don't forget to sign up for a month of hell, er, best fitness instruction of your life" etc.

Well, about the first week of February, she had a little blurb about the 100 Day Burpee Challenge. "Email me if you want to sign up!" So I emailed. I'm getting married in 5 months, I thought. I need all the motivation to get to the gym that I can get! I was thinking small, people, very small. I was thinking we would have to do a few burpees a day for 100 days. What is a burpee? Well, it is awfulness. A full body workout/movement that makes you dread the next day every day. Try it out: start standing; put your hands on the ground and jump your feet back so you are in push up position; do a pushup (I'm a girl--pushups are hard! and I did NOT know that pushups were part of the burpee. We never did the pushup when we did burpees at bootcamp!); jump back to standing; jump in the air with your hands straight up over your head. Congratulations! You have just done 1 burpee. Wasn't that just the most fun!?!

So maybe it isn't the most fun, but it sure does get your heart rate up. So I thought, a few every day will be good for me and not crazy hard. Word to the wise: don't sign up for a challenge when you don't know what the challenge is. The challenge is: on Day 1, do 1 burpee; on Day 2, do 2 burpees; on Day 3, do 3 burpees. Get the picture? That means that on Day 36, do 36 burpees, and on Day 100, do 100 burpees. 100 BURPEES!!!!!!!! OMG YALL! It's going to kill me!

So here I am on Day 39. I did 39 burpees today (see how that works?). Why didn't I start blogging about this on Day 1? Because even though Day 1 was no fun, and neither was day 25 or day 32, burpees were not yet the bane of my existence until this week. This week, I hate them. HATE them. (My dad always said if something or someone is so bad that you hate it, then it isn't worth your time to hate it/him/her. Sorry Daddy! I really hate them! And I have to do them every day, so I can't help but think about/hate them all the time. Come May 25th, there will be no more hating!)

You know how they say that exercise is a good way to get your stress out? Well, I have always subscribed to that notion. But now the exercise is the source of my stress. When will I get to the gym? Do I have clothes at the gym? Does the gym close early on Sunday?

Why must I go to the gym when I don't need any equipment? Because I live in the top (of 3) floor of a row house, an old row house. My roommate did some (very) soft jump-n-jacks one day and our landlord/below our floor neighbor had a conniption! Can you imagine how he would react to a burpee overhead?! No go! And when this thing started, I could not go outside -- winter is cold! And we were right in the middle of Snowpocolypse -- I don't need snow to make these things any harder. So off to the gym I went. Now that it is warm and Spring-like outside, I can just go out to the park and do them, but that's embarrassing yall! I look so silly and my shirt always flies up and sometimes my pants start to sag and I have to rearrange myself so I'm not exposing anything indecent and the ground is dirty and there are kids pointing and people driving by and it's just bad.

So here I am, Day 39. Stronger, leaner, more toned, and full of hate. and love. I really do have ambivalent feelings towards these things. I mean, if I am going to the gym, I might as well get some cardio in, and maybe some strength-training. So I do like the effect burpees have on my body -- but what about my spirit, yall?! Read on to see how it all turns out...