Day 8 - Mad and Crazy Monday!

Here we are after hiking Temple Quarry. Caron, Frances, Chelsea, Reg, me and Anthony.

Here is the terrian we were hiking in. A rock quarry with tiny little dirt paths. Luckily no sand!

This is Avalon one of our hiking guides. She and I "killed it" this morning while talking about goats.

This is my buddy Reg. He and I will both be running 5Ks when we get home in July.

Annamarie, one of our trainers and Reg.

Sharon giving those first weekers "what for". LOL glad it's not me. She beat me up enough in core class!

The Daily Bread

Breakfast was an absolutely fabulous Greek fritatta. Spinach, feta, turkey sausage, guacamole, and balsamic reduction. One new girl thought it was choc sauce! OK...

Carrot soup, very good.

Wish I had taken a pic of the innards of this burrito. Brown rice, black beans, ground turkey, and veggies. The garnish is a guacamole and red pepper sauce.

Salmon burger with green beans. Color is off since we were dining al fresco under the patio;)

Cranberry sorbet;)

Huge events have unfolded at the Ridge today. First, I hiked like a mad woman and after our Monday morning accessment hike, they bumped me up two levels for the week. I am now in the first intermediate group with only one group ahead of me. You progress each week (hopefully) and the hikes get harder, faster, and longer. I am on Van 4 with all my favorite buddies: Frances, Julieann, Reg, Chelsea and her mom Carol, and Caron.

Great event #2: I did the class called Mountain after hike, breakfast, and stretch. In this class you go up in incline every three minutes while you are walking on the treadmill at about 3.5 mph. You go up a total of 12 times. The highest the treadmill will go is a 15. By the time I finished I was at 15 for the last 6 minutes. There isn't a feeling that quite matches that. I want everyone to know what's going on with me, but I also want to put this into words so when I'm tempted to slack off or cheat foodwise when I get home I will have something to look back on to see how far I've come. My friend, Julieann, ran for the first time on the treadmill today. I'm so proud of her.

And the big finale: When I was around 8 I went off a huge ditch with my bike and skinned all the skin off both my knees. I rarely rode a bike since then, maybe like 4 or 5 times and not very far. Today I asked Tiffany if she was teaching gym class and she said she was and it would be at the park and grab a bike and a helmet and head over there. I got sick. I told her the story and she said, "Well class doesn't start for an hour, so go get a bike and a helment and ride around the parking lot until you are ready to go to the park and I'll follow you in my car." Are you kidding me!!! You can't get out of anything here! So I did and guess what? I rode a bike all the way to the park (about a mile) and played kickball and came back on the bike! And guess who was there to clap and cheer me on when I arrived? All my buddies! I am so blessed to be here.

I encourage each of you to face those fears this week and get out there and do something extraordinary! Just one thing. What are you afraid of? Failure? If you fail, at least you tried. Don't let the day go by without facing the challenge. It's that important and you can and you're worth it:)