Spotlight on the Camper: Brandon Clarke Floyd

Have you ever looked down and won­dered what just went by so fast? That would be Bran­don Clarke Floyd!

Bran­don is orig­i­nally from Red Bud, IL (45 min south east of St. Louis MO). He moved to Pow­der Springs, GA in 1976, grew up in Cobb County, and moved to Hot­Lanta in 1987. Bran­don trav­eled through Cen­tral and South Amer­ica in 92–93 before he set­tled down with his wife, Robynn in ‘94. His chil­dren Noah, Jack Elliotte, and Lily Fran­cis Hilde­gard Floyd were born in ’98, ’99 and ‘02.

Brandon’s fam­ily has always been in con­struc­tion. He grew up work­ing with his grand­fa­ther and opted out of the col­lege route. He started his own busi­ness at age 20, sold it and started another. Bran­don is cur­rently a builder/renovator for ResCom Inc. as well as an investor in rental prop­erty. All-in-all, he’s a ren­o­vat­ing type of guy.

Out­side of boot camp, Bran­don loves to water ski, snow ski, play poker, read non-fiction, travel, camp, and hike. He’s been known to drink a bour­bon and coke on occasion.

Bran­don blames Gra­ham for get­ting him involved in BC4C. Bran­don real­ized how out of shape he was and needed to fix it to keep up with the kids and (to quote Ricky Bobby) keep up with ”his smokin’ hot wife”. So he came to BC4C and never looked back.

Brandon’s ini­tial goals for join­ing BC4C were to lose a lit­tle weight, add some car­dio, and gain a lit­tle mus­cle to boot.

Brandon’s biggest fit­ness accom­plish­ment is mak­ing it to camp almost every morn­ing for 8 months! This is a huge feat, espe­cially now that it’s cold.

Brandon’s Fun Facts

Favorite work­out: Ab-normal

Favorite exer­cise: 
burpees and pushups

Advice for new boot campers:
 Hang in there! Believe it or not it does get a bit eas­ier. Get­ting lots of sleep and eat­ing well helps too.

The best thing a trainer has done for Bran­don:
 All the train­ers have been great about encour­ag­ing you to push your­selves. They each have their own way of mak­ing it hap­pen, and because it is always some­one dif­fer­ent help­ing you, you do not get tired of them annoy­ing you with their men­tal and strength chal­leng­ing comments.

Did you know? 
Bran­don can walk through a broom! He is hop­ing there is a broom chal­lenge at camp one day soon.

Spotlight on You!

So, here we are, mid-January. The time of the month when the New Year’s res­o­lu­tions start to fall by the way­side. But not by you, right? You’ve kept your focus, even in the midst of the Snowpocalypse.

In honor of your hard work, we are shin­ing our spot­light on you today.

We want to hear from you! Tell us what you plan to achieve in 2011.

For exam­ple:

• Do you plan to learn any­thing new? About exer­cis­ing? About nutri­tion? About yourself?
• What fit­ness accomplishment(s) to you plan to tackle this year?
• Do you have any diet chal­lenges you plan to beat?
• What are you look­ing for­ward to doing most this year?

We look for­ward to fin­ish­ing out an out­stand­ing Jan­u­ary with you, and hope to see your shin­ing face all year long. Stay strong!

Give us your feed­back by click­ing the “Com­ments” link above!

IMAGE CREDIT: Uni­ver­sity of Louisville

Spotlight on the Camper: Don Dollar

He’s quiet and stealth and if you blink you’ll miss him speed­ing by. Don Dol­lar is a BC4C reg­u­lar and the one who sets the pace everyday.

Born in Atlanta, he spent most of his early years in the shad­ows of Stone Moun­tain, and now he calls Decatur home. He pays his bills by sell­ing and main­tain­ing con­trols that are used in man­u­fac­tur­ing plants.

Don is a big fan of the live music scene in Atlanta — you can find him at Smiths Olde Bar and Vari­ety Play­house type places. He also enjoys load­ing up the bus and tak­ing road trips. He says there is noth­ing quite like the open road and no agenda!

Don got involved with BC4C through Bran­don Floyd who asked to come out in April. His first reac­tion to Bran­don was ”Hell No!” But Bran­don asked again a month later and Don decided to give it a shot.

Don’s ini­tial goal when join­ing BC4C was just to make it on time every day for the month. Don’s biggest fit­ness accom­plish­ment is still show­ing up for camp on a daily basis and not quit­ting. Out­side of camp his biggest fit­ness accom­plish­ment is run­ning a 5k in November.

Don’s biggest diet chal­lenge is junk food. It’s too avail­able at home and he tends to eat what the kids eat. He’s too lazy to take a trip to the gro­cery store and buy some­thing healthy to eat — shop­ping is not one of his strengths. (Psssst– Now that the train­ers are aware of tid­bit above, Don and his log­book will be under extra spe­cial scrutiny. ☺)

BC4C is happy that Don, AKA Dou­ble D, has become a con­sis­tent fix­ture in the park!

Don’s Fun Facts

Favorite exer­cise: Get­ting in the car and dri­ving back home from boot camp.

Favorite work­out: No par­tic­u­lar work­out – Don likes when things are mixed up like run­ning fol­lowed by pushups, etc.

Advice for new boot campers: Make an uncon­di­tional com­mit­ment to com­plete one month of this pro­gram. You might be sur­prised of a new habit that comes out of this.

The best thing a trainer has done for Don: The train­ers keep encour­ag­ing Don to stick to the exer­cise at hand and push him to com­plete it to the best of his ability.

Did you know? When Don was a kid he was a fan of the band KISS. One day he pre­tended to be Gene Sim­mons and tried to blow fire. Well his fire blow­ing tech­niques didn’t account for the head wind and he lit him­self on fire. Luck­ily his friends wit­ness­ing this great feat put him out. Don is grate­ful for his friends that were around that day just as he’s grate­ful for all the train­ers at BC4C that have his back.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The image is an approx­i­ma­tion, not a real photo, of Don Dollar.

Spotlight on the Camper: Brian Knight

Brian Knight has the best excuse of all not to be in the park this month: he and his part­ner are expect­ing twins! We can’t wait to see pic­tures and hope that once the early morn­ing feed­ing sched­ule becomes a stan­dard rou­tine, he will come back to BC4C. We know that if he can han­dle L-Train, he can han­dle any dynamic duo.

Brian is orig­i­nally from Brook­lyn, NY and cur­rently resides in Mid­town. He moved to Atlanta in 1995 for grad­u­ate school and decided to stay. Brian is a Chi­ro­prac­tor; his prac­tice is in Ans­ley Mall in Midtown.

Brian enjoys work­ing out, skiing/snowboarding, trav­el­ing, live music, the­ater and good food!

Brian orig­i­nally got involved with boot camp because his fit­ness rou­tine had hit a plateau. A life goal was to learn how to run and enjoy it. His ini­tial goal upon join­ing boot camp was to be able to run a mile with­out stop­ping. His biggest diet chal­lenges are: eat­ing late at night, car­bo­hy­drates, and a pretty seri­ous Diet Coke addiction.

His biggest fit­ness accom­plish­ment has been run­ning a 5k with­out stopping.

Brian’s com­mit­ment to BC4C has been truly inspir­ing. We will miss him in the park in the morn­ings. In the mean­time, we will look into adding a baby lift­ing work­out to our line-up.

Be sure to con­grat­u­late Brian the next time you see him!

Brian’s Fun Facts

Favorite exer­cise: Push-ups

Favorite work­out: L-Train

Advice for new campers: Keep com­ing back no mat­ter what games your mind plays on you when that alarm goes off at 5am! Per­sis­tence pays royally.

Best things a trainer has done for Brian: Brian gets the most help when a trainer runs with him and gives him advice or encour­age­ment. They seem to know exactly when his mind is begin­ning to play tricks on him.

Did you know? Brian used to lie his ass off to get out of PE in grade school. Now he is wak­ing up at 5am to do it!

Spotlight on the Camper: Hallie Dillon

Hal­lie Dil­lon is a super­star at BC4C, a super hero to our favorite four-legged friends and an all-around amaz­ing person.

Born in in Bat­tle Creek, MI, Hal­lie moved to the ”great state” of AL when she was 7, and took brief stints in Tal­la­has­see, FL and Mil­wau­kee WI after grad­u­at­ing from Uni­ver­sity of Alabama. For 16 years she has called Atlanta home. She and her hus­band, Patrick, live in Clark­ston, but will be build­ing a new home in Brookhaven next year.

Hal­lie is an Appli­ca­tion Team Mem­ber and Fos­ter for Adopt a Golden Atlanta, an ESOL Tutor for Lit­er­acy Vol­un­teers of Atlanta (she is cur­rently tutor­ing a Soma­lian lady who is study­ing to become a Phar­macy Tech­ni­cian), and she is Trea­surer for the Uni­ver­sity of Alabama Atlanta Alumni Club.

Hal­lie loves watch­ing and tail­gat­ing for Alabama Crim­son Tide foot­ball. She also enjoys being with her dogs (Grace­land, her 4 1/2 year old Golden Retriever, and Fred, her 4 year old Great Dane).

Hal­lie joined BC4C after her friend (and BC4C camper) Nicole told her at an Adopt a Golden event how they couldn’t stay late because they had to get up the next day for boot camp. When Nicole said BC4C donated 100% of their pro­ceeds to char­i­ties that’s all it took for her and Patrick to join.

When Hal­lie first joined boot camp she was look­ing for some­thing dif­fer­ent that would chal­lenge her and keep her on her toes (lit­er­ally — now she is doing all her push ups on her toes!).

Hallie’s fit­ness accom­plish­ments include com­plet­ing two full and eight half-marathons.

Hallie’s biggest diet chal­lenge is her addic­tion to chips! Hal­lie loves salt and vine­gar, sour cream and onion, sour cream and ched­dar, dill pickle, reg­u­lar, tor­tilla, chee­tos, any­thing that’s a chip! She can’t get enough! Her biggest chal­lenge is not buy­ing them. Now that she is track­ing her calo­ries she is def­i­nitely doing better.

Hallie’s Fun Facts

Favorite exer­cise: Ab exer­cises because she is really good at them! (Hal­lie holds her high school’s record for num­ber of sit ups in a minute — remem­ber the Pres­i­den­tial Fit­ness Test?!)

Favorite work­out: Long run day (espe­cially when Daniel does drills with us). He pushes her and really knows how to help vet­eran run­ners like Hal­lie improve their form, speed and endurance. Hal­lie also likes “Spare Change” because the coins help her focus on some­thing other than the work­out and she enjoys being on a team.

Advice for new boot campers: Lis­ten to what the train­ers tell you. They truly are there to help you and they don’t want you to get hurt so if they call you out, it’s only to help you do some­thing correctly.

The best thing a trainer has done for Hal­lie: See above on the long run days. She loves Daniel!

Did you know? Hal­lie was the Drum Major for the Uni­ver­sity of Alabama Mil­lion Dol­lar Band when she was a senior (for the 1992 National Championship).