The Last Two Days

Sorry that there hasn't been much time for blogging - even mini posts. The last 24 hours have been so great, though, that I knew I had to throw another one up here now that I have a bit of a chance.

To begin with, Sam from Biggest Loser season 9 was here on Friday. He's a trainer at the Malibu location now, and he taught our last class yesterday - circuit training. It was an amazing class. First of all, it was the last class on a Friday, and word had gotten around that it would be killer, so attendance was low. That meant that we got more individual attention. Also, the energy in the room was at such a high level that I really pushed myself to do more than I expected to.

I started out on a treadmill, with my buddy John on the machine to my left. Well, for some reason, his machine was picking up a reading from my heart-rate monitor. At first we just laughed about it, but then when we were running sprints, he started calling out my heart rate to me and encouraging me to get it even higher. Then, one of our trainers - Annamarie - got onto the treadmill to my right. She said, "I dare you to do your next sprint at 6mph." Well, that's what I'd done my last sprint at, so I said, "Forget that! 6.5!" "Let's make it 7," she said. "Deal." So then I'm running a two minute sprint at 7mph with John calling out my heart rate on one side and Annamarie encouraging on my right, not to mention Sam pacing back and forth behind the treadmills being all kinds of motivational.

While we were on the weightlifting equipment, Annamarie asked if that was the fastest I'd ever run on a treadmill. It wasn't. Last week I hit 8mph for 15 seconds. "Good," she said. "Your last 15 seconds today I want you to do it again."

For the last sprint, Sam divided us into two groups. Group one sprinted while group two surrounded them and cheered for them, then we traded places. When it was my turn on the treadmill, my buddy Jim was right at my shoulder shouting "Come on D! You've got this! Take it up a little higher!" I sprinted at a 7.5, waiting for the last 15 seconds, but with 30 seconds left to go, Jim said, "Let me see an 8, D!" So I did. It was a great class, and a very clear demonstration of the difference that a support group can make.

Then, this morning, we ran a 5K. It was my first one, and it was great! At the starting line, Sam's cousin and teammate - Koli - gave me a high five as we headed out. I'd decided to jog as far as I could, then walk for a while, then pick the jog back up. Well, I never needed to walk, which surprised me very much. I probably knew 30-40 of the 600 participants, so there was this nearly constant bubble of support and encouragement. Towards the end, I realized that I'd either passed, or been passed by all of my people, and I was running in a group of strangers. I started to get sad about that - that I was about to accomplish this amazing thing, and no-one would be there to see me do it. That was when my friend Jan came running back toward me. She'd been the first resort guest to finish and was coming back to run others in. "It's time to sprint, Denice!" she shouted, and ran me all the way to the finish line. When I got there tons of the resort staff where there shouting my name and waiting to give me high fives - as well as Koli, who was the first to high five me when I started the race, and the last to high five me when I finished it.

I forgot to check my time, but I'm pretty sure it fell somewhere between 35 and 40 minutes.

My plan had been to walk back to the resort after I finished the race, but as I headed out, I thought about how much it had meant to have Jan run me in, and I knew I was making the wrong choice. I went and found Mom, who was nearly to the point where Jan had picked me up, and soon we'd run her in, beating her previous 5K time dramatically.

It was really, really, really great!

Anyway, we have to go get some rocks (it's a Mom thing), but I wanted to share all of that with ya'll. Pictures to come later.

Denice (daughter)