Day 18, I thought it was supposed to be easier at the end of the week?

Comments/Thoughts:
Ok, before I get into the negatives (and some positives) of my day I want to spend a little time thanking my family, and especially my wife for allowing me the time to be out here.  I am a stay at home father, and my wife provides well for our family.  She has gone out of her way to make it possible for me to be out here at a high cost to her emotionally and physically.  She constantly amazes me, and I hope that you know I both love and appreciate you for it Jennifer.

The other day I mentioned how people had given me a boost by saying that I inspired them.  Well there are many people that inspire me here, and one of the big ones yesterday and throughout my stay has been a younger guy named Cody.  Cody is here from Alberta, Canada for four weeks (this is his last) and he has been here for the first two weeks with his father, and the last two with his mother.  It seems like from day one I have been trying to catch Cody on the hikes.  He keeps getting faster and faster, and so do I, but he always seems to be able to kick it up to another level.  Today we did Sam's personal training class (Cody will have done 4 with Sam this week!) and many of our activities were together, like pulling a 40lb weight with weighted ropes across a field back and forth like plow horses.  Cody pretty much got me through that class by example.

Today was a rough day for me.  Yesterday I pulled my quad again and so today I thought it was fine.  That was until kickball class when it thoroughly tightened it up once again.  It happened right before my personal training class and I was extremely upset and disappointed.  I ended up being able to complete the training class, but I missed my scheduled class ever to ice afterwards.  It was upsetting since I at least wanted to attend a calorie burning class ever hour of the evening.  I did end up with two pool classes at the end of the day, and I worked out with my arms pulling me across the pool between them so I ended up with a significant calorie burn by the end of the day.  By dinner I was content with what I had accomplished, but one thing I would say to people coming here is to definitely do some personal training, but make sure you leave a day or two without them in your week.  You are already putting your body through the ringer, the personal training takes it up about 10 times as hard.  It helps you find your max, but just remember that your classes and maintaining your body throughout your stay should be your focus.

Statistics:
I walked 21,332 steps and 12 miles and burned 5,390 calories via my fitbithttp://www.fitbit.com/user/22B6S6

Watch Calories Burned: 4338 calories!

Hike and Exercise:
Today my hike was Castro's Crest and it was fairly challenging.  You walk down into a valley and then ascend quickly up to the crest.  As usual there were some great views and I enjoyed it.  On the way back Sam and Kimberly (two of our guides) decided that Cody and I were going to push hard from the top back down and out and we were shooting to do it in 25 minutes.  We power walked through the canyon and finished the very last leg to the van at a jog.  We finished in 24 minutes and to put that in perspective we were maybe 1 to 2 minutes ahead of the group at the top of the crest and when we got to the van we were maybe 8-12 minutes ahead.

Exercise today for me consisted of a kickball game after the hike where I re-torqued my quad muscle in my leg.  Very frustrating since 20 minutes after that I did a personal training session with Sam.  Sam had Cody and I throwing medicine balls across a field, doing squats in series for 1+ minutes at a time, and pulling weights on ropes together up and down the field.  Very intense, but actually not bad on my injured leg.  By the end of the class I did have crazy sore ankles and my leg still was bothering me a ton.  I missed my next class to ice and then did two swimming classes.  The classes I missed today were treading and ball works.  I was sad to miss treading since it is one of my favorite classes, but I just knew I would hurt myself more in that one.

Food:
Breakfast was an english muffin with eggs and bacon, definitely one of the better ones.  Lunch was a salad and turkey club pita.  The bacon in the club was great and the pita was better than I imagined.  The soup was vegetable and it was much better this week than last week.  Dinner was chicken and squash so I actually ended up eating a Boca Burger (always an optional meal) with vegetables.  The dessert was an apple cobbler made of oats and cinnamon cooked apples.  It was good once I sweetened it with some Truvia.

Slideshow/Pictures: