Well, it's Monday. It was a hard Monday and not as many of us made it to Bulldog this morning. I got up at 4:30 a.m. and took my dogs out in the backyard. They both immediately turned back to me. It was dark. It was cold. It was pouring rain. Oh hell no, we all thought. I looked online at the workout for today...box jumps (ugh), wall-ball burpees (wtf are those?), pull ups...sigh. By now 10 minutes had passed and the dogs were curled up together and snoring softly at my feet. And I thought. I thought about my commitment to myself to do this, to get stronger, to get better. I thought about the warm bed and how good it would feel to climb back under those covers for a couple more hours. Then I thought about how disappointed I feel when I miss a workout that I know I could have gone to. This morning I didn't have a migraine. I wasn't sore. Really, I wasn't even tired. "Oh hell, yes I'm going," I told those lucky dogs.

So I went. And on the way there, the rain turned to snow and ice. Nope, nature couldn't help me out. Luckily the Stones came on the radio, so some loud shadoobies helped me on my way. (Shattered)

It was definitely hard. I felt very slow and heavy today. After slogging through 3/4 of the warm-up, I started the strength portion. We did deadlifts starting with 90% of our max (190 for me) we did 5 x 65%, 5x 75%, and 5 X 85%; so for me this was 115, 130 and 150. 150 was pretty difficult, but I made it through.

Then that workout. I won't lie: when I heard what wall ball burpees are, I gave Gio every sad puppy look I could muster. It's a burpee where you do the push up part on the wall ball, then as you jump up from the squat position, you launch the wall ball at a spot 8-10 feet up on the wall. My plain old burpees look like a very drunk person who might have dropped a quarter or a contact on the floor and is then trying to stagger back up to standing again after someone dropped an ice cube down the back of their pants. Trying to get a wall-ball toss in there is pretty hopeless.

Note: Gio is completely immune to my pleading looks. Not that he doesn't see them, but I'm not there to have an easy workout and Gio knows it. He is very determined to have me succeed --even more determined than I am a lot of the time. He proves to me what I can do. Does that make sense? I think so.

So I did the whole workout, with a few slight adjustments:

3 rounds of 20 box jumps (box step ups for me); 15 wall-ball burpees (10 lb ball); and 10 pull ups (ring rows for me). I completed this in 22:57. I came very close to making it on the Uncle Pukie board, but I managed to contain my stomach contents like a proper lady.

By the time I left Bulldog, it had stopped snowing and raining. Still a pretty cold and sleepy day -- and I've been pretty fatigued throughout the day; but I also know that my meals after breakfast have not been the best. I definitely need to work on that!

I'll try to head back to Bulldog tomorrow morning or Wednesday at the latest. Thanks much to Gio and Greg and Michelle and to Doug, Austin, and Travis for encouraging me today!!