One of the reasons this was my third time attending the BCBD Transformation retreat is I love having a relaxing vacation that is also full of fitness. I love the opportunity to go somewhere warm in the middle of winter and take advantage of the opportunity to mix workouts with suntanning on the beach or by the pool.
Our schedule for the day usually looks like this: meditation & yoga in the morning, eating breakfast, doing a boot camp mid-morning and then finishing the day with a group goal-setting session in the afternoon and a beach run at sunset. This year the format was slightly different. We started the morning with meditation & yoga as usual but then had the entire day to ourselves. We were supposed to finish the day with an evening boot camp at 5 pm & beach run. However, on the first day, the tide was too high to have a beach run after boot camp so we moved it to happen after our morning meditation & yoga the next day. This year’s morning yoga spot was on a stage by the pool looking out at the ocean. It was definitely not as epic as last year but still gorgeous. It was a bit windy on most days so we got to deal with flying yoga mats as an obstacle to our practice. Definitely good for patience 🙂
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I filmed one of our yoga sessions so here it is on super speed! I’m so happy that Erin was back as our yoga teacher this year. She attended my first transformation retreat in 2013 and shared guiding our practice with another attendee. I helped guide practice in 2014 with Eva, so it was nice to practice for myself this year and not have to worry about leading the group.
Our morning runs were lovely. I ended up doing 4 during the week. I ran Weds (4km), Thursday (6km), Friday (4km) & Sunday (5km). I took Tuesday off because on Monday after boot camp I got really dizzy while returning towels to the pool deck and stepped backwards and fell really hard on my wrist & tailbone. My ankle & left glute hurt pretty badly Tuesday morning so I just chose to journal after yoga instead of braving a run on the sand. The sand was pretty slanted toward the ocean so it was really hard on the ankles but great training for trail running & OCRs this year. I did my last run of the week without shoes on and my ankle found it much easier than in shoes. I was able to run closer to the ocean or in it so it kept me cool.
Our 5 pm boot camps were the highlight of my trip, fitness-wise. I love pushing myself and my girl Eva always works our tushes off. I usually place myself beside my best friend Katie because we know how to push each other even when we don’t speak. Katie is on my right and Debbie is on my left in the best yellow sports bra ever in the picture below.
Here is a video I filmed of our second-day boot camp in the parking lot. We found a bit of shade and I donned my HyperKewl Ultra Cooling Vest and off we went. I’ve been wearing two different kinds of vests to keep my core temperature low so my MS symptoms don’t come back when working out. Here’s a blog post on the subject if you’d like to read more.
On day 3 I added a cooling hat to the mix and it was amazing. All these cooling products and I had no trouble keeping up with the girls during boot camp in the Dominican heat.
Our very last day we had to finish the boot camp with a 2-minute plank. Charlotte, Debbie, Katie, Karen and I (seen below) turned our mats to face each other and we pushed through with zero complaints. These ladies are strong and just planking beside them made us push through without a whimper. We were even greeted with a rain shower and rainbow to finish off the boot camps for the week.
In terms of other fitness activities, we partook in… On Saturday, I got the girls to go surfing with me which was a workout itself and every day Katie and I would get bored of sitting and suntanning so we’d go for 2 hour walks on the beach and take cheesy photos. I’ll do a post on our ridiculous photo shoots tomorrow!
Stay tuned for more!