Rounding Out Week 4 of Boot Camp

With apologies for the days of silence (boot camp is getting a little monotonous, though not any easier), here I go:

The last week has been pretty much like the preceding weeks, except that there hasn't been a boot camp in the park for a while (which means that I haven't had the opportunity to work on my non-sand running skills). I made it to 10 sets of stairs at the Manhattan Beach Dune Park (the equivalent of going up and down 100 flights of stairs). It would have been more, but there was a minor setback having nothing to do with my fitness level and everything to do with public restrooms being totally disgusting.

I continue to improve at some of the strength training work, my flexibility is improving, and I totally did not suck at beach boot camp yesterday. These are all good things, although I remain terrified that it will not be enough for me to make it on the mountain climbing in Ethiopia (7-8 hours of trekking each day for 3 days, covering 12 km and climbing 400 m each day).

Finally, there is a new winner for lamest camper ever. Worse than the slow (physically and mentally), kind of racist camper and the right wing fanatics (although they remain pretty bad) is the new crazy lady, who will be around for the next 4 months (making me even happier that I only have 2 weeks to go). What makes her worse than the others? The extreme and totally non-endearing crazy. I can look past the fact that she wears sunglasses in the gym, and that at 50 she's just too old for pigtails, but she doesn't stop there. She talks to herself. She spontaneously bursts into song and dance and applause. She makes bird noises whenever she sees birds. She actually asked yesterday if we had an official camp cheer. Also, she isn't very bright, and stupid and crazy is a bad combo. The one good thing is that my group of friends has one more person here to mock.

Speaking of some of the other awful campers, two of them reported the good massage therapist for (1) hugging a camper who'd complained of having a hard day and (2) taking a call from her 12 year old daughter (I'm assuming it at least could have been an emergency) during the work day. Have I mentioned before how much these people suck?

Finally, I'm almost done with shopping for my trip. I bought everything online (except for my hiking boots, which I figure I should get fitted for). Many thanks to Jodi Ettenberg (who was the initial inspiration for my round the world trip) for this great post on packing for such a trip.