One of those days

Today has been "one of those days."  For the past four and a half weeks, my body has responded great to the program, but this morning it decided to stop responding.  Another way of putting it is that I have hit the wall.

I still made it through the hike alright and got some good benefits from the hike, but I had to stop and catch my breath a lot.  There was one time going uphill that I had to tell my legs to move.  It was disappointing because I've made good progress every week and was looking forward to more progress this week.

At lunch today I asked other guests that have been here longer than I have if they hit the wall yet.  Both of them said that in their fifth week they hit the wall.  So I know that I'm not alone, and maybe this is normal.  Wednesday is called hump day for a reason and today I'm really feeling the hump.

As a result, I didn't get any pictures on the hike because I was more focused on putting one foot in front of the other.  Today we did Switchback, which I did a couple of weeks ago and overall is a challenging hike.  It starts at the same parking lot as Zuma Ridge and Ocean View.  It is a shorter hike, so we took a loop a couple of times and got bored, so the group decided to spend the last part of the hike going up Zuma as much as we could in the time allowed.  Remember that the hikes are at least 2 hours long.

After the hike there is always a class before lunch.  Everyone's favorite class is stretch because it is relaxing and yoga-like.  As I mentioned before, everyone is assigned a color group - yellow, orange, or purple.  This determines the order of the afternoon classes, but today I found out the color group also determines which days you have stretch class after the hike.

Everyone will have stretch twice a week and the other days we are given an option - either a class in the pool or a repeat of one of the classes in the gym like circuit training and mountain.  I always select the class in the pool because I like the water.  Besides, after hiking for two hours, do I really want to get on the treadmill?  My feet say no.

This also means that a few days a week I am in the pool twice for classes.  Then on Thursday after the hike we play kickball.  I'm already excited about it tomorrow.

The afternoon classes on Wednesday are kickboxing, mountain, and something in the pool.  Kickboxing is one of my favorite classes.  It gets the heart rate up, the sweat dripping, and burns a lot of calories.  Besides, it is a great outlet for anger issues.

Mountain is the same as always - easy in the beginning, very tough at the end.  I had to take the intensity down just a bit in mountain and the pool class because it is just one of those days.

Closing thought for the day:  The head trainer said that most people hit the wall in their third week - I hit the wall in my fifth week.  Tomorrow is another day and I hope things get better because we get to hike Solstice Canyon on Friday.  I'm going to sleep early tonight and put this day behind me.