Just a tad behind in blogging my latest 12WBT Adventures….. flat out! I have a couple of posts drafted so will post a few in succession.
Week 11 was fantastic. I upped the ante with my cold long gone, the stomach bug almost gone and my hip/ITB/knee feeling much better (because I was a compliant patient, even though I was frustrated to be limited in training for a time!). During this week I had a new goal to see how fast I could get my heart rate over 150bpm, as it liked to sit comfortably around 148bpm, and to see how fast I could get the sweat to hit the floor! This coinciding nicely with the next #CrackofArse Challenge – cracked some serious arse! Literally – I have a new pair of blisters on my butt from butterfly sit ups with a huge medicine ball. It is almost butterfly shaped… Mason & I pondered whether that is where the name of the exercise comes from. Hehe. 
I kicked it off to a huge start with Day 1 of Amelia Burton’s #CrackofArse Challenge. Up at 4.30am to be at the gym when it opened. The idea of #CrackofArse is to get up and train Monday – Friday between 5am – 7am. You then tweet Amelia a photo of your sweaty beetroot face post-workout or your calorie burn on your HRM. It gets you up, the training done and the monkey off your back before the day has even properly begun!!
I did #CrackofArse 4 days out of 5 with no trouble. On the 5th day I was stuck in traffic due to a cyclist being hit. I got to 
the gym just after 7am, a bit ticked off that I had missed my last #CrackofArse. I trained hard anyway – smashed out a 5km run with a PB. Then I backed it up with a PT session that is probably one of the best to date. More Cross Fit like – 5 rounds that absolutely smashed me. Involved some kettle bell swings, skipping, running… and more. Mason started out saying I would do three rounds but then part way through decided I should do 5 rounds because I had it in me and it is supposed to be 5 rounds. Once I heard that the “right way” was to do 5 rounds there was no way I was stopping at 3 rounds. I actually smashed out more reps of everything in the rounds 4 & 5 than the previous rounds. Just goes to show I could have been working much harder first up! Lesson there. Keen for more of those sessions, that’s for sure!
Back tracking by a day, on Thursday I expected to be doing the PT session I ended up doing on Friday… instead Mason surprised me with a 1 RM test – blogged in detail about it already. In summary I did a 100kg dead lift, 70kg squat and 50kg bench press. The most any female client of Mason’s has ever dead lifted and possibly ditto for the squat and bench press. Strong is the new skinny!!
Saturday was a fantastic Pain in Paradise Boot Camp for 1.5hrs with a gorgeous group of 12WBTers down at Redland Bay. The weather and view were glorious. We kicked off at 7am and the grass was very cold and wet! Afterwards we went for coffee & brekky at a nearby cafe. Bliss!
Sunday we had our next Intense Sunday Session with Mason at Zenergy. A group of around fifteen 12WBTers came along for a massive flogging! I have already blogged about it here.
Sunday night I planned my final Week 12 training and menu, got my work stuff organised as I have double the classes to teach for the next 2 weeks (bad timing!) & 
packed my training gear. I realised that with all the plans for week 12, especially with other 12WBTers on the final weekend, I was not sure I could fit in Mish’s Week 12 Lean & Strong Challenge of the 900 reps, so I smashed that out on Sunday night as a way to kick off Week 12 a little early. I was so surprised to get through this workout better that I anticipated. 4 weeks ago I would have struggled a lot more, so it was a fantastic sign of my progress.
We are not half way through week 12 and it is so exciting. The transformation pictures and stats being posted are mind blowing. I am so happy for everyone as I know how hard they have worked and how amazing they must be feeling to see the results of all that hard work. Squeee!
I’ll be back soon with more updates as I do my final measurements, fitness test and those after photos! Eeek!!
Xx Ange
