There has never been a workout with Devin where I wasn't grateful that it was over. For me, the whole purpose of working with a trainer, is that he'll push me harder then I'll push myself. As much as I wish that I could afford to pay Devin 5 days a week to workout with me, the reality is I can't... so I've had to unleash my “inner trainer” when he's not with me. This means continuing to increase my intensity, changing things up, making sure I don't quit and of course talking to myself.

For those of you who read my blog regularly, you know that last week I realized I had been running at the same pace of 5.4 miles/hour for at least a month. I had become complacent, I was still burning calories and getting an adrenaline rush but I was missing one major component... THE EXHAUSTION!!!

This morning I decided to push myself a bit more and turn the speed up to 5.7 miles/hour. For most of you (especially non-runners) you are probably wondering “what's the big deal?” Well my thighs beg to differ. I'm running 4 minute intervals, at this new speed my thighs were BURNING at 2 minutes and I literally had to coach myself through not slowing down the speed.

Though society frowns upon talking to yourself, when you work out you really need to listen to your inner voice. There are a number of things I tell myself when I'm having a hard time with a new workout:

• this was a lot harder a few months ago, you need to take it up a notch


• this is good for you, you'll be proud of yourself when its over


• once you increase your intensity, there is no going back


• you'll get through this, you've done harder things then this before


• remember how good your ass looks now that you jog


• and the most important one: you will only disappoint yourself if you don't finish this

Figure out what is going to keep you going and remind yourself of this while you workout... it will help distract you from the pain and the stop watch.

I got through the intervals today, but the last two minutes of each interval I was desperate for it to be over (except for the final interval of the workout). At 46 minutes, I was so impressed with myself that the last 2 minutes went by quickly (well except the last 10 seconds... which I watched every second slowly tick by like time was standing still)!

It's easy to enjoy the adrenaline of the workout and quickly forget, if there is no exhaustion then you probably aren't pushing yourself hard enough. It was a wake-up call for me this morning to feel this exhaustion again.

In the spirit of bootcamp... when the 48 minutes of my workout was over... I gasped a choice 4 letter word and started my cool down happy this was over for another day! But here I am 15 minutes later... able to breath again... heartrate back down and ready for the day... though I'm not sure at this point if I can climb back upstairs to take a shower... I might just need to sit here in my sweaty workout gear and start working!