Tuesday T-Shirt Tales: Adventure Boot Camp

T-shirt tales? Because every t-shirt tells a story, don't it.
And I have so very many of them. Shirts. And stories. ---- Whaaaaat??

All T-Shirt Tales

SUMMARY: A 2007 foray into all-around exercise.

Way way back I spent 3 mornings a week for a few weeks doing "Boot Camp". Specifically for women, in this case, although the "drill sergeant" was male. Trying to improve my strength, flexibility, stamina, and super-hero eligibility. 

Along with the big moolahs for the registration fee, we got a "free" t-shirt to wear every session (and of course that we got to keep--advertising and all that). A nice quality shirt, actually.

I did improve during that time, but couldn't afford to keep going, although it was fun while it lasted.  I already blogged about how I got started, what it was like, and what our Los Gatos Trail hike looked like. If you want to revisit ancient days. Only the one post with photos.

• Sept 26 Signing up
• Oct 1 Training Me and the Dogs - mostly the dogs, but a couple sentences about Boot Camp
• Oct 5 First week boot camp report
• Oct 9 Boot Camp Progress
• Oct 10 Boot Camp Hike
• Oct 12 Boot Camp vs Dogs
• Oct 15 Boot Camp Results
• Finally some photos! Of the boot camp hike

Feelin' my best!
Jeez, I look so much younger!

Post-Boot Camp

SUMMARY: Keeping up with some of the exercises.

Well, I'm not doing an hour of intense exercise and stretching 3 days a week as I was in Boot Camp, but I'm trying to keep up some of it. Every other day or so, I do a couple of sets of jumping jacks and of jumping rope, some basic stretching, and run several laps around my yard. Each lap takes about 25-30 seconds, depending on how many dogs I have to dodge, hoses I have to hurdle, and lemon tree hanging fruits knock me on the noggin. But it's all rapid movement of the legs and arms, balance, and aerobic activity.

Plus a very little weight lifting.

I'm still not back to walking a mile daily. It's been a couple of years now, probably, since I've done it daily. Probably only a couple or 3 times a week. Do it, Ellen, do it! Or, as our electronic sign board in the Cal Band used to say, because there weren't enough spaces for the whole phrase "DO IT BAND!", "DOIT ELLEN".

Nationals Practice

SUMMARY: Good practice today, but tired.

Every year, the weekend before Nationals, Power Paws Agility hosts a nationals practice for their students. It's lovely--free--plus snacks and drinks--plus courses from previous Nationals Grand Prixs and variations thereof.

Today's weather was absolutely lovely for it. Not too warm, but sunny. Just a teeny breeze. Hazy--apparently we're getting a wee bit of the air crud from the southern california fires, 300 miles and more south from here! Amazing.

I ran Boost, even though she's not competing. She did very well. Knocked a couple of bars when I called her wrong, had a couple of runouts on tough pulls, and skipped the second weave pole on a tough entry that almost everyone (except Tika, woot!) had trouble with, but she got it easily the second time around the course, and not everyone did. And her contacts remain fast and accurate.

Tika ran well enough, but I notice the lack of speed especially in comparison to Boost. She moves efficiently around the course, but she doesn't drive like I've seen her do sometimes, or like when she spies a squirrel, or even when I'm tossing the frisbee. This is summed up as follows: In two of the previous 3 years at Nationals, her speed was plenty fast enough to get her into the Grand Prix semifinals, but each time we had a 5-point fault, which dropped us just below the cut-off point. If she had been half a second to a second faster, even the fault wouldn't have kept us out.

But she did her contacts fairly quickly today, even the dogwalk, which I've been working on lately for speed (although never enough, never enough!).

The worst part of today was how tired and brick-like my legs were, once again, from yesterday's mile test at Boot Camp. First 3 or 4 runs were OK, but my feeble attempts at sprinting became less sprintlike and more thudlike; after run #8 (4 each dog), three and a half hours after the first one, I called it quits for the day.

My first run at Scottsdale isn't until Thursday, so I should be hale and hearty by then. The trick is to keep up with my daily one-mile walks to maintain my stamina for the site, without overextending myself.

Boot Camp Wrap-Up

SUMMARY: Boot Camp was good; some measurable improvements.

With some regrets, I bid my 4-week Boot Camp session a fond farewell. If I'm conscientious about continuing what I've started, my general fitness will continue to improve.

There's that "if", though; one of the things about BC is that the instructor calls out what to do and for how long and ensures that you get an appropriate mix of exercises across the week. The next thing is the interaction with others. The third thing is being outside at a nice park. I moved my exercycle outside this spring, but I find that, now, mostly I notice all the yard chores that remain undone. But it is more pleasant than being inside, where it's tedious and confining, like being in a gym.

That aside, I made progress. I can jump rope better than I could at the beginning. I improved my mile time in 3 weeks from 11:44 to 10:51. I did 9 push-ups compared with 7 three weeks ago--and that's after almost 2 weeks of not being able to do much of anything involving my shoulders because of the bursitis. I thought I wasn't going to be able to do the push-up test, but tried one cautiously and discovered that it didn't hurt.

My official evaluation had my weight and assorted measurements mostly the same, although, interestingly, my hips are 2 inches narrower (and my bust is an inch narrower, drat!). I tried to wear the same type of clothes that I wore the first time--no girdles or bustiers. And my body fat measures down 2 pounds but muscle up 1 pound, according to their little gadget.

All in all, not a bad start.

Boot Camp Hiking in Los Gatos

SUMMARY: As promised, some photos from the Los Gatos Creek Trail

	Showing off my new muscles (and camp shirt) before this morning's 3-mile hike. But I'm no dummy--note, if you will, that you can't actually see whether the muscles are real or simply bunched-up fleece sweater.
	Drill Instructor Brett guides our small class in gentle stretching before the hike. (Note: Me not in photo. Me snap picture. Give finger good work-out.)
	At our beginning point on the Los Gatos Creek Trail, the class sets out ahead of me, while I (for some reason) fall behind...
	...and further behind... Note that CA Route 17 whips by just inches from us here. But along most of the trail's length, you can't see it, and although the noise is there, you can still talk comfortably (if you're not gasping for breath going uphill).
	...and yet further behind... (When I was done snapping photos here, I jogged to catch up.) Trails run along both sides of Los Gatos Creek, which flows in its natural habitat--a concrete channel. (Further downstream, parts are in a more natural state with wide flood control.)
	Mileage marker; we think that's how many miles from Forbes Mill in Los Gatos, which is just a little ways before where we actually started.
	Small waterfall in the mossy creek bed.
	Much of the trail runs through woodland. Although the concrete creek bed is to the left, it's mossy enough not to look awful, and although the freeway is to your right, you can't see it; along this stretch, it's just the pipeline you see (probably water from the dam flowing to percolation ponds...hmm, probably what Wikipedia has identified as government-speak depression focused recharge , the local water district technically calls groundwater recharge systems-- or see this glossary).
	The beginning of the only real hill before the dam.
	Hill doesn't look bad in the photo--hard to capture that extreme rise in elevation.
	James J. Lenihan Dam turning Los Gatos creek into Lexington Reservoir. This viewpoint is where I turned around today (last week I got partway up the dam) because I kept pace with the last walker in our group because I need to be able to run in class tonight with Tika.

Demo, Bars, Boot Camp Results

SUMMARY: Filling in some updates.

Demo and possible agility site

Saturday's demo was well-received by the horsey set. They burst into delighted laughter and cheers and applause when a dog did the weaves or the teeter. Cheering and applause for every run. A good group to demo for.

On the down side, the arena was a bowl of mush after rain the night before. So now we know that these arenas won't do after rain. And that was only one day of not-too-awful rain, too.

Took us a while to find someone who could tell us where we were supposed to be. After we found someone who could send for the correct someone who was responible for us, we had much discussion and exploration about where the footing was good enough to do agility, so wasted more time. Our trailer ended up in the wrong area of the horsepark, blocked in among horse trailers, trucks, and so on (thinking he'd be staying there for a while) and, once we finally found where we were supposed to be, he took 10 minutes to figure out how to turn around and get to the proper spot. As a result, instead of doing an hour demo, we did about 25 minutes. And about 30 dogs showed up, so we each got exactly one run.

We trashed our plans for a full course and came up with something on the fly that was interesting but that fit into the only usable, reasonably firm footing (among gooshy areas), about 60 feet long by 15 feet wide. We didn't use the A-frame, dogwalk, or chute.

Both my dogs went into the weaves at full speed and then pulled out and dashed in front of me to tell me in an excited way that they didn't understand the footing. I made them try again and both did fine the 2nd time.

I had said that I'd come if there weren't enough dogs, and the organizer said that they always need more dogs. Huh. To me, 6-8 dogs, maybe 10, is a good demo group. So I drove 45 minutes, spent an hour futzing around, waiting, and setting up, got in one run with each dog, packed up for the next half hour, then drove home 45 minutes. I'd have never taken the dogs for one run. Oh, well. And they insisted that we finish up at 6:30 as planned, although there was nothing after that. Probably issues with closing the park at sunset or the equivalent.

Boost weaves

But I did make them leave the weaves and one tunnel set up just long enough for me to put Boost through the weaves twice more, and sure enough, the 2nd time she popped out early as per last weekend. So I grabbed her under the chest, raised her front feet off the ground (she was coated with horse-arena sand so I didn't want to pick her up), told her that she shouldn't do that, and redid the weaves, which she then did correctly.

OK, so if that fixes THAT problem again, then the trip was worth it. But the dogs were both rarin' to go when I got home instead of having any steam worked off, having been in crates for the better part of 3 hours.

Boot Camp

I filled out an evaluation for the first week of Boot Camp, giving it 10 out of 10 on pretty much everything. Drill instructor is good, workout is good and pushes my comfort level, we keep moving in a variety of things, so just when you think you can't take another ab exercise, we move into something else. And the final few minutes, lying under the open sky and doing cool-down stretches, feels like heaven.

On the down side, all my weak parts are taking notice. Bursitis in my shoulders, which hasn't bothered me in a year, flared up Friday. I wasn't aware of doing anything in Friday's session that aggravated it, but both Friday night and Saturday night I had trouble sleeping from the pain in the left shoulder. Today I discovered that it's apparently the push-ups that did it--as soon as I tried one, it hurt immediately. That's disappointing, as upper-body strength was one of my reasons for wanting Boot Camp. Plus pushups are one of the two measures they use for your progress during camp. He had me do other types of exercises while the others pushed up.

I guess I need to do more work at home with resistance bands at a lower intensity. Sigh. That's what they had me do for physical therapy when I first hurt the shoulders--using crutches improperly about 10 years ago. Of course I stop doing the exercises when the pain finally goes away. Duh. But it's just BORRRRINNNNG--

Knee tells me that it doesn't want to jog first thing in the session, but after I'm well warmed up, it doesn't bother me much and I can jog fairly well; it's still the knee and not the cardio that's keeping me from pushing myself on the running.

I don't feel nearly as tired today as I did last Friday. In fact, after my usual nap, I was thinking about walking with the dogs, but it has started raining again and I'm a wimp. Hmm, wait, maybe it has let up.

Knocking bars

We did get in a couple of good agility practice sessions today, once after Boot Camp and again midafternoon. Boost knocked bars like crazy again. Last week we got in a couple of bar-knocking drill sessions... have done quite a few lately and The Booster didn't seem to be getting it; then at the last session, again, something seemed to click, and I couldn't get her to knock a bar fer nuthin'. But, today, we were back to the beginning. It's always something.

Boot Camp versus Dogs

SUMMARY: Wiped out from boot camp; affects working with my dogs.

(Huh, did Blogger's default set-up just change? Font sizes on the whole page while I'm editing are much smaller than usual. All other sites are the same--)

Wednesday night was Tika's class. I didn't feel sore after that morning's walk, but I discovered that my legs felt like stone when I started trying to run with Tika. Could barely move those gams. It was hard to get much faster that a moderate jog, and there I was, trying to drive Tika down contacts or beat her in a front-cross maneuver. It's counter-productive to keep running her when I'm not peppy, as she starts slowing down, too, and I don't need that to happen this close to Nationals.

Maybe the Wednesday morning hiking thing won't be the grand benefit that I thought it might. After all, I typically cover 10 miles a day on an agility weekend (per my pedometer). But, of course, most of it isn't all at once or as intense as the hike. We'll see how I do next Wednesday night; I might have to bag the morning hike the last week, which is right before Nationals, or at least just do a leisurely walk.

Thursday night for Boost's class I was fine. And, of course, she doesn't need me to be as peppy all the time as Tika needs to maintain her drive.

This morning it rained fairly heavily off and on, so instead of being in the park doing our circuits of exercises, we were in the gym and the shopping center (outdoors center), doing a lot of jogging and leg exercises. Then I missed my afternoon nap while my company's computer expert came down here to help me try to solve some problems. I am exhausted. My knee is very unhappy. I've been icing it all day, and it's still unhappy. Had no energy to figure out what to do with the dogs in the rain; inside exercise requires a lot more activity from me (can't just throw the toy 80' across the yard over and over). So dogs are antsy.

Really need to lie down. Really need to sleep. Really it's only 7:30. Bleah. Maybe I'll go have a hot shower and see how I feel after that. If I can stand up that long. Hmmm, no, think I'll go lie down.

Boot Camp Hike

SUMMARY: A decent workout over about 3 miles.

We hiked the Los Gatos Creek Trail from downtown Los Gatos to the Lexington Reservoir dam. My pedometer was seriously confused and registered only a mile, but it's roughly a mile and a half one way. So, in 50 minutes, I covered about 3 miles.

It's a gradual uphill on a smooth, wide, unpaved trail running along the Los Gatos Creek and just below Highway 17 (which you barely notice is there). Nearing the dam, there are a couple of short, moderately steep uphills, and then the final climb alongside the dam is also moderately steep. I had just reached the base of that final climb when time ran out and it was time to turn back, but I walked up about halfway to meet the farthest person coming down and we walked briskly together back to our starting point.

We did a few quick warm-ups before setting out. Drill Instructor encouraged us to jog, and some of us did some on our way up (I might have been able to do more if I had remembered to take a hit off my inhaler before starting), but as far as I know only one person did any jogging on the way back. My legs were getting plenty of a workout. On the way up, talking was possible but with an effort; on the way back, talking was a bit easier but still not gaspless. So the cardio workout was pretty good either way.

I've walked this trail below Los Gatos and above the dam on various occasions, but somehow never this stretch. It's a lovely walk in the woods most of the way, then out in the open along the creek canyon before the dam. I'll have to do this one more often.

Also, I could probably take my snapshot camera and get a couple of pix next week.

Boot Camp Progress

SUMMARY: I see improvements already.

After only a week--4 days--of Boot Camp, I've noticed some improvements already. One thing I'd really like to improve is my stamina for agility. I cover so much ground on agility weekends and still want to stay pumped for my dogs before, during, and immediately after their runs so that they're pumped and rarin' to go. I felt somewhat more energetic before many of my runs--it's subjective, and only a vague sense of improvement, and I still dragged plenty by the time my 20th run was over, but there were times when I surprised myself at how much pep I still had.

One of the exercises we do every day is jumping rope. It seemed so simple when I was 8! The first day, I couldn't get a rhythm going and got caught in the rope every 2 or 3 rotations. Wednesday was marginally better. Friday I started to feel the rhythm but was still laughably inept. Monday--yes, exhausted from the weekend--I did 3 sets of 15 without missing a single one, but as the final exercise set rolled around, I again tangled up three or 4 times. But what progress on balance and coordination in only a week!

We do several dumbbell exercises. I started with 3-pounders. (And gaped in awe at the hundred-pounders at their gym.) Yesterday I moved up to 5-pounders for half the exercises, although had to return to 3's when I couldn't complete a set.

I started picking up the pace in the jogging, too. Maybe my thighs are improving already, too; knee seems to be bothering me less each session. Same thing for jumping jacks; first day I did an alternative form just side-stepping because it bothered the knee too much, but yesterday most of the sets I did regular jumping jacks (although still not "jumping" very high or hard to protect that very knee).

I did 4 sets of 15 push-ups against the picnic table top--4!--with only the last couple of the last sets being truly pathetic.

Wednesdays are hike days; I'm looking forward to this (I can do hiking!...says here...). It's supposed to rain in the early morning, but I expect by 9:00 we should be fine. I'm curious how different hiking with Boot Camp is from hiking with assorted friends.

More Weekend Notes and A Course

SUMMARY: I'm discouraged about Nationals. And an interesting Standard Course on Saturday.

• Of the 52 dogs entered in Saturday's 22" Masters Standard class, there were 6 Aussies, one Aussie cross, one Australian Cattle Dog, and one over-the-top Tervuren. The rest were Border Collies. Somehow this depresses me, even though one of them is my own sweetie, The Booster herself.
• Of the 23 in 26", a "mere" half were Border Collies. More variety here: Three Aussies, a Rough Collie, a Whippet, a Terv, a Catahoula Leopard Dog, a German Shepherd, a Golden Retriever, and three mixed breeds.
• If Tika's Top Ten Standard points were on the USDAA standings page right now, she'd be tied for 21st (with 25 points). But the stats are a month behind at the moment, and I know for a fact that at least 3 of the people on that list have had at least 3 more weekends of placements (including this weekend's Sunday Standard). So we're still soooo not there.
• Why am I bothering with Grand Prix at Nationals? Tika almost never runs clean. When she does, the gap between her time and the winning times is getting slowly wider and wider. I don't think that she's slowing down much--her times are still fairly consistently in the 4.5 to 4.9 yards per second range. But her time--while excited--on this weekend's course was 5 and a half seconds slower than the fastest dog. That's nearly 20% slower. Twenty percent! I think that the younger, faster dogs keep coming in faster and faster. The only reason that we earned a 1st in Standard was because all the other 26" dogs knocked bars or crapped out. Sure, running clean on that course was a good thing. But she was still 6 seconds slower than the fastest dogs. Six! That's an eternity.
• On the other hand, we can do Team. Because, in team, bar-knocking matters so much less than off-coursing, and we're pretty good about staying on course. And because we can usually rack up points in gambles by picking good strategies and executing smoothly. Still, I think that last year's Finals appearance was a fluke--that, once again, we lucked out that the fast teams happened to hit courses where they crapped out, and we just kept plugging along and got lucky that none of us had a bad run. Seems SO unlikely that that will happen again this year.
• So why the heck am I going and spending all that time and money? This weekend has only discouraged me. That, plus the fact of having been unable to qualify Tika in Steeplechase, and of having only one dog to run for the first time out of my assorted 8 Nationals appearances. Instead of looking forward to a relaxed week, I'm feeling like I'm slipping, my dogs are slipping, my expectations are too high.
• Maybe I'm just tired. Exhausted. It was SO hard to drag out of bed and do Boot Camp this morning, but I did it.
• Are local people NUTS? While I (and I'm not the only one I've heard say so) am burning out on so much agility and time and money, local clubs, including mine, are working FOUR more USDAA trials into the yearly schedule! One argument was that there will be "only" three DAM team events in the Bay Area next year, so a fourth would be good. Jeez--I remember when there used to be one every other year in the Bay Area. One of the usual September trials hereabouts actually LOST money this time--it was the last qualifier of the year, and I suspect that people (like me) had either qualified already or just wanted a break between the Labor Day regionals and the other 3 USDAA trials running alternate weekends from now through Nationals. Can this area really support that many USDAA trials, on top of the CPE, AKC, and ASCA? And now a couple of clubs are doing DOCNA, too!

Saturday's Standard

So, what was Saturday's Master Standard that wiped out so many dogs? Here ya go.

• There were some problems with bars, offcourses, and refusals from 3 to 4 because of the sharp turn. Some people pulled and rear crossed 4 or ran behind the tunnel, others got ahead on the teeter and front crossed between 3 and 4. That worked nicely for both of my dogs; I think that was the better option if you could do it.
• Some offcourses shooting out of #4 and getting a paw onto the dogwalk before the handler could get to the end of #4 or call the dog off.
• A lot of dogs coming off the dogwalk headed for the tunnel instead of the tire. I don't think that anyone expected that, but probably because of the extreme angle of the tire, dogs coming of the dogwalk, with the handler running behind trying to catch up, really didn't see any obstacles except the tunnel. After watching a bunch of those, I ran on the left side of the dogwalk, figuring that then she'd be erring toward looking at me. Instead, when she didn't stick her contact or wait for me (argh, she *also* took a couple of steps towards the tunnel, but at least I was in a position to call her off instead of trying to handle it from behind.
• The 8-9-10 seqence vexed many people; quite a few popped weaves because the handler hung back to make a break for #9; knocked bars or runouts on #9; offcourses after 9 or around 9 onto the Aframe (yes!) or into the wrong side of #10.
• There were quite a few knocked bars in the 11-13 sequence, particularly 11, I believe (it wasn't a straight line from 10 to 12).
• Problems of many varieties in the 16-19 sequence. It was mu subjective opinion that people who could put a front cross between the chute and #17 and therefore push out to #18 had a better chance of avoiding knocking 17 or having a runout when the dog pulled inside #18.
• Seems to me that there were issues in the 18-19-20, as well, but I don't recall anything sticking out in particular. Some people got a front cross in before 19 (I did) and I thought it worked more smoothly than sending to #18 and running on the chute side of 19, because if you were behind your dog there, you risked a bar down when trying to push or pull from behind--unless the dog is really accustomed to working like that.

Boot Camp and Boost Can

SUMMARY: First week's Boot Camp report; Boost does good.

Boost's status first--Boost is doing so well in class! We're making mistakes, but really not out of line for the kinds of mistakes that the other, more-experienced dogs and handlers are making. Her weaves remain good. Her contacts remain good. We had class last night, and this morning I got a nice note from our instructor congratulating me on her great improvement over the last month. Sure, I've been working on things, but it really does seem that it's more like something clicked in her collie brain and she's finally put together all those 2 years of training into something that works for us.

She'll be in all Masters classes this weekend, and I'm eager to see how she does. Plus another chance at a Steeplechase and Grand Prix.

I had Boot Camp for an hour on Monday, Wednesday, and this morning. Wednesday night in class with Tika wasn't too bad although my muscles were a bit tired. Thursday I was quite sore all day and really flagged in Boost's class in the evening. Today I was still sore before class (most everyone else was, too). But I managed to jog 2 full laps around the field (1/5 mile each lap) before needing to walk a bit, which is better than Monday and Wednesday.

Today was "Testing Day". First, you ran/walked a mile as best you could and recorded the time. I walked about 3 half laps of the 5 laps and finished in 11:44. Out of 7 people, I had the third slowest time; times ranged from about 9:50 to 14-something. Drillmaster (my title for him) says that the goal is to improve our one-mile time by at least a minute before the last day of class, which is only another 3 weeks.

Second, we did as many pushups, in whatever mode, in our own time, as we could without completely stopping. I knew that this would be hard for me--I did 7 on my knees, not my toes, and I had the fewest in the class. The rest ranged from 9 to 35! (Against the top of a picnic table, later, I did 2 sets of 15, which is better than barely managing two sets of 12--with a struggle--on Monday.)

When I continued to the rest of the day's exercises, I discovered that my right hamstring was very painful and I actually couldn't do some of the exercises with that side. That's the same side as my crappy knee and the same side on which the thigh muscles need improvement. I'm guessing that, if the thigh muscles were stronger and taking more of the load, the hamstring would've held up better, too.

I'm icing and ibuprofening and I'm hoping that it's not going to hinder me in sprinting with my dogs on course this weekend. Everyone else gets the weekend off!

My classmates all seem nice. There's at least one gal in college, and at least one 49-year-old, because they were comparing notes on wednesday about what they each thought they should be able to do based on what the other could achieve. There's another lady who came to Boot Camp with a friend several sessions ago, signed up for herself, and has kept with it; she's now doing two sessions simultaneously! She says that she had never done any kind of exercising, ever; she had never heard the terms "crunch" or "lunge", had never run laps... what's this country coming to? ;-) One lady is obviously more overweight than the rest of us, but I don't seem to be tremendously more fit than she is. Harrumph.

The drillmaster is good; keeps giving us instructions on how to hold ourselves, what to move, what we should be feeling in our various muscles. A good mix of good-natured "keep moving--I didn't say you could stop yet!" and "don't hurt yourself, this isn't about pain!"

Training Me and the Dogs

SUMMARY: First day of boot camp for me. Working on Tika's drive, bars, future contact work.

So much to do, so little time. We've got a USDAA trial this weekend, a week off, another USDAA trial, another weekend off, then that following Monday or Tuesday heading for Scottsdale.

Boost's not competing at Scottsdale, so it's just the usual stuff. She's doing some fabulous weave entries in the yard now. So she WAS learning all that stuff, she just now got around to deciding to apply it!

With Tika, I need to focus on:
* Tika's drive to the end of the contacts, particularly the dogwalk and teeter
* Bar-knocking drills

Tika tends to blast fast through most of the dogwalk and then saunter to the end--or, as she's just started doing, leaping off before the contact. So I just keep rolling around to contact-drive work, revving her up, slapping the contact, driving her with my body, too, and not rewarding crappy slow sauntering ones. We never got our second Steeplechase qualifier--sigh--so it's just Grand Prix and Team.

I've been working on the ground in getting her and Boost to run through my PVC frame that's the size of the dogwalk contact and going to a target further ahead, so they get clicked for getting front feet into the box and the reward goes at the target. Tika's still mostly jogging through it, although I think she's picking up speed; Boost blasts into the box but in her short life we've done so much targeting work and stopping on the contacts that she wants to stop in the box. But, when she does get out again, she drives to the target.

That's in prep for working on Tika's up contact, which I just really don't think I want to deal with before Nationals. And I have a fantasy about retraining contacts to be running contacts, which I REALLY REALLY don't want to even think about before Nationals.

But I'm reserving the rest of November, all of December, and part of January to muck with contacts. Only one CPE trial over Thanksgiving weekend, and I had the guts to NOT sign Tika up for Standard so I could avoid putting her on the dogwalk while I'm (in theory) retraining.

For me--today was the first day of boot camp. As expected, my arms are my real weak link. They are SO tired, I don't even want to be at the computer. But here I am. With lots of Real Work to do, too. Jogged most of the laps we did; walked the rest as soon as I started to feel it in my knee. Knee held up pretty good, actually. Next session--Wednesday morning.

Boot Camp

SUMMARY: I've signed up to make myself really sore and tired.

I've been pondering a yoga class for years and never could bring myself to make the time or money for it. Don't know why; it seems like a really good idea. But what I think about, when watching videos of me running with my dogs, is that I look like I don't know how to run. And, when I'm loading my car, I'm thinking what a wimp I've become--my shoulders, arms, back, stomach--none of them work the way they used to.

A comment by one of the instructors at Power Paws Camp this spring got me going. She said that she always felt incompetent when running and handling her body (from a perennial nationals finalist--maybe we all feel that way!) and decided that "this problem, like many others, could be solved by throwing money at it," so she hired the local high school's soccer coach (or the equivalent) to give her lessons. I'd been on the verge of going over to the local high school, now that school has started, and asking for the soccer coach.

See, I did one season of track and field in high school, and the coach worked with us on how to run, how to start, how to move arms, shoulders, everything--but the details have fled my head. I'd love to relearn and to regain some body strength (I ended up doing shot put and discus rather than running).

Then, two weeks ago, an agility blogging online pal from New Jersey posted a message about doing an all-women's boot camp, and about feeling so good as a result. That hit fast and center.

But I had doubts. (1) Started at 5:30 in the morning. STARTED. Ha! Bad enough I have to get up that early for agility. (2) Five days a week. I have meetings in the mornings 1 or 2 days a week, plus with everything else going on, I don't have a lot of time. (3) Even if there was a San Jose-area location, it would probably be a lonnnng way from here, probably north, and I'd have to fight commute traffic, and wouldn't that make me just cheery in the morning? (4) 6-week sessions--I'd have to take a week off for Nationals at the end of the month, and don't want to pay for something I'm not going to use, and so might not be able to sign up until late fall sometime, and how off-putting is that?

So I went to bootcampfinder.com/. Lo, there's a San Jose location. And someone In The Great Upstairs just knew what I was thinking:
(1) For the first time, they're trying a 9:00 session.
(2) They don't always offer it, but this time they're offering a 3-days-a-week option.
(3) It's only 15 minutes from home, by surface streets or freeway.
(4) Most sessions are 6 weeks, but in October they're doing a 4-week session, which would finish the week before Nationals.

This particular Boot Camp was clearly meant for me and only me! How could I not sign up? So I did. I'm sure it'll be worth the money; less than the entry fees for 2 dogs for one weekend of agility, although I can't afford ongoing sessions.

I'm looking forward to it with both excitement and trepidation. The trepidation part is--my knee sucks. My back sucks. I can't do a single pushup worth beans. My cardiovascular system is a mess. Am I going to be able to do it without hurting myself more?

I met the instructor today. They have alternative exercises if anything aggravates my knee (or back or whatever). He's the right one to be the leader--his energy level matches Tika's! He bounced cheerily all over the place while taking my initial measurements and talking about the program. Funny thing; he has a 6-month old Mastiff, Bacchus, whose front paw is almost bigger than Tika's head! And Bacchus just lay on his side through the whole 20-minute meeting, dog-napping. Wagged his tail lazily and sniffed my fingers without lifting his head when I said hello. What an interesting match in energy levels! Instructor says that all of Bacchus' energy seems to be going into growing, so mostly he just sleeps. But he does attend all the Boot Camp classes.

They want me to have Running Shoes. Not sneakers, not cross trainers; Running Shoes. I think that my shoes are technically cross trainers. But, especially after paying for the Boot Camp, I can't afford another pair of shoes. We'll have to use what I've got.
So--Monday morning, 9:00. Oboy. But they have only 6 (!) signed up for the 9:30 session. Sounds iffy as to whether they'll offer it again. Who are all these people who can get out of bed in the middle of the night, 3 to 5 days a week, and exercise frantically for an hour at 5:30 in the morning??

If you're in the San Jose area, and feel like you want some exercise, sign up for the 9:00 session to encourage them!