Day 5 at the Biggest Loser Resort in Malibu: Piuma hike and hard core training session yet again…

April 11, 2011

Comments/Thoughts: (Thursday 4/7/11)

It was a great day at the resort, but I am beat! The hike we did today is called Piuma, and it was a fairly challenging hike. It is almost all straight up and on some really rocky terrain which makes for slow going at times. It was gorgeous and once I got passed my soreness and exhaustion I enjoyed it. I am at the point now where I am not running out of breath on the hike, but I am not able to convince my tired legs to move very fast. It is an odd disconnect to try to push your legs and the muscles just respond at 70% capacity. It is like moving through water (which I actually did do later.)

The food and exercise was pretty much on point today and I really feel like even though I am only here a week I have begun to bond with Kent, James and Louis pretty well. They are a very intense workout group and I wish I had a group like them at home to push me. I definitely went to my Sam group training session today because of the group feeling.

An interesting occurrence happened today when I was going to do my laundry… I found a tar ball on my shorts from the beach workout yesterday. I put my hand right in it and got the hand covered in tar. That was bad, but thank goodness I didn’t wash my clothes with that tar on it. I just threw the shorts out and proceeded to try to find something that would was a ton of tar off my hands. Sara at the desk told me that sunscreen helps remove it so I bought a bottle of sunscreen from the store, and low and behold with some vigorous scrubbing and tons of hand towels I got it off. So just remember to stay away from the tar on the beach, and if you get it on you the answer is sunscreen. Who would have thunk it?

Statistics:

Watch Calories Burned:

Hike: 1108 Calories

Personal Training: 551 calories

Three classes: 950 calories

Exercise:

What a great day of exercise. First was the Piuma hike and it was really challenging for me. I am not sure how to rate it versus my Zuma hikes, but they are very close in difficulty. You get to see many beautiful hills and valleys and cool homes as you are hiking up and the nature is breathtaking. I was sort of in the middle of the hikers today which was good for a change, and I really was able to descend quickly with my hiking poles which helped out. Our hiking guides were Randy, Zoe and for some reason I can’t remember our third guide! They were great at usual. I made it almost to the “top” I was probably 3 minutes away when we turned around. I really had a hard time pushing it thanks to my beach workout and weakened leg muscles.

After the hike I went to my room and iced my shins and legs to prepare for the difficult afternoon I was about to have. It helped out and really got me ready from our group session.

The group session with Sam was incredible, and difficult. It is great to be working out in a group with guys that push you to be better. Kent and Louis really helped me get through the workout, and even helped me just show up. We did some crazy walks at 15 incline on the treadmills while either holding a medicine ball, a weighted bar across our shoulder, or a exercise ball we had to throw against the wall and catch while we went crazy on the treadmill. We had to do all three and alternated like a circuit with them. It was intense, and after that we went into different circuits, you should look at this post at Louis’ blog since he goes in depth and has some videos Sam took of him doing our exercises. You may hear me yelling or groaning in the background.

After the group session my 2:30 class was pool with Ursula which was good, and then I went to Ball Works with Sam at 3:30. The Ball Works class was great because I got to co-lead the class with Sam, which meant we partnered up and I got to get pushed a little harder since I felt like the group was watching me more. It was a very intense class and very different from the usuall ball works classes I have been to. Sam does lots of partner throws, and lots of lower body work with the balls as opposed to a ton of core work. It was an active and moving class with two lines of people constantly moving down the line in sync. Very good stuff. My final class of the day was at 4:30 with Katina I was late since I had to get tar off my hands before I went to class. I caught up though by taking my recovery time down to 2 minutes between the 5 and 4 minute intervals. It was a good workout.

Food:

For breakfast I had eggs and toast since I love that as an alternative. Lunch was amazing today since it had a ton of protein in it. It was a chicken and avocado soup with a decent amount of chicken breast in it followed by a turkey sandwich with a ton of turkey. It was one of the better lunches and all the protein was much appreciated. Dinner was a turkey stuffed green pepper with veggies and that was great with some extra ketchup and hot sauce. Dessert was vanilla pie which is grape nuts with vanilla soy stuff on top. Not really pie, not really that good. I made myself a huge salad with an egg in it from lunch as well so dinner was very filling.