Thank You, Trainers
(for the Day)!

This morning’s work­out was lead by Train­ers for the Day, Jeff Leonard, Julie Adams, and Kate Schin­del. These folks went all out — includ­ing check­ing in campers, check­ing jour­nals, mak­ing morn­ing announce­ments, warm­ing up, lead­ing a well-designed work­out (com­plete with BC4C-branded sig­nage), cool­ing down (with dance party), AND trainer awards! They did such a good job that we’re going to let them take care of man­ag­ing the rest of the month’s work­outs.

In case you missed the trainer awards:

• Most Likely to Have the Thick­est HR Com­plaint Folder: Andrew
• Most Com­mand­ing “Dad” Voice: Andy
• Most “Boot Camp­i­est”: Lauren
• Most Likely to Beat Any Camper in Any Sport: Mary Ellen
• Most Likely to Push Campers to the Brink… with a Smile: Tracy
• Most Likely to Push Campers Down… and Laugh: Daniel
• Most Sym­pa­thetic to New­bies: Susan
• Most Flex­i­ble (Phys­i­cally and Emo­tion­ally): Kathleen
• Most Likely to Breed his Own Boot Camp Super-Race: Brandon
• Most Coolest: Mary
• Most Likely to Warm-Up Campers with a Bunny Hop: Robin
• Most Hor­ri­ble Work­out King: Leigh

Today was such a blast that we’ve decided to make this a quar­terly event. Stay tuned for details in Q1 of 2012… and start plan­ning trainer teams, bids and work­outs! (Con­grat­u­la­tions to the inau­gural Train­ers for the Day for such a success!)

I’ll Do Anything

Remem­ber to place your bid to become Trainer for the Day. Jeff Leonard, Julie Adams and Kate Schin­del are the new lead­ers with an $80 bid. Get in on the action… pool your money with up to 2 friends and place your bids today! Get all of the details and place your bid here →

Nutrition Tips When Traveling in Airports

Remem­ber to place your bid to become Trainer for the Day. The cur­rent high­est bid is $20 from Jeff Leonard. Get all of the details and bid here →

If you spend much time trav­el­ing for work or plea­sure, you know how dif­fi­cult it can be to make healthy choices in an air­port. And it’s even worse when you get stuck in the air­port due to delays and can­cel­la­tions – which seems to be more often than not these days. For those who fre­quently travel it can be dif­fi­cult time to try to eat healthy while in the air­port. Here are some ideas to help you choose the healthy food choices on the go:

1. If you don’t have time for a meal prior to head­ing out the air­port, pack some­thing to take along — or pick some­thing up at your local deli. Wait­ing in air­ports can be stress­ful and/or bor­ing… which can bring out emo­tional eat­ing in many peo­ple. Bring­ing your own healthy snacks can do dam­age con­trol. Sug­ges­tions: turkey or peanut but­ter sand­wich, low-fat yogurt, fruit, nuts, string cheese. Snack on these health­ier choices rather than pur­chas­ing the not-so-healthy snacks on your flight.
2. Be on the look­out for healthy food options in the air­port. Most air­ports sell turkey or grilled chicken sand­wiches. Use mus­tard ver­sus mayo. You might also want to remove the cheese to save about 200 calo­ries and 20 gm of fat. Other healthy options include a salad with grilled chicken. Make sure you get dress­ing on the side and use it spar­ingly. A bet­ter choice would be to ask for low calo­rie dressing.
3. Foods that con­tain pro­tein, fat or fiber tend to hold you the longest. This is espe­cially impor­tant if your flight gets delayed and you end up sit­ting there for hours… This could turn into a diet dis­as­ter! So some­thing like a turkey sand­wich would be a bet­ter choice than a muf­fin. An ounce of nuts (make sure its one ounce or about a hand­ful — most por­tions are larger!) and a fruit would be a bet­ter choice than a bag of pretzels.
4. Drink plenty of water. This may help you to eat less. Also, fly­ing tends to cause dehydration.

Spotlight on the Camper: Jeff Leonard

Jeff grew up all over the East Coast – from Jack­sonville, Florida to Cheshire, Con­necti­cut and sev­eral places in between. He claims Raleigh, NC as his ”home” since he’s lived there the longest (6 1/2 years). Jeff went to Clem­son Uni­ver­sity for under­grad (Com­puter Engi­neer­ing) and Wake For­est for law school.

Jeff lives with his wife Mira on St. Charles Avenue in Virginia-Highland. Leigh has occa­sion­ally led a run right by his home­stead. Fel­low boot camper, Kate, is Jeff’s next door neighbor!

Jeff is an attor­ney who rep­re­sents busi­ness own­ers and their com­pa­nies in all man­ners of cor­po­rate trans­ac­tional work – from form­ing new com­pa­nies, draft­ing and review­ing con­tracts, and merg­ers and acqui­si­tion trans­ac­tions. Basi­cally he answers e-mails, makes phone calls, meets with clients and drafts cor­po­rate doc­u­ments. Yawn.

Jeff and his wife love to travel and fre­quently visit her fam­ily in Bul­garia. They have used their SkyMiles to visit Aus­tralia, and have been all over Europe. They also enjoy tak­ing advan­tage of Atlanta’s diverse restau­rants, but they are hardly foodies.

Jeff also likes to play golf, watch Eng­lish Pre­mier League Foot­ball (soc­cer), and par­take in some bar trivia – his wife laments he has a head full of use­less infor­ma­tion. Jeff is a TV junkie and sci-fi nerd and con­sid­ers Arrested Devel­op­ment, Star Trek:TNG, Bat­tlestar Galac­tica, Com­mu­nity, 30 Rock and Mod­ern Fam­ily among his current/recent favorites.

Jeff got involved with BC4C through his work with Every­body Wins! Atlanta, a local children’s lit­er­acy char­ity which he serves on the Board with Sarah Abend (Andy’s wife). Every­body Wins! received fund­ing from BC4C last fall, and Jeff thought he should at least try it out once. Well, it’s six months later and he’s in for the long term. Jeff needed some­thing to change his rou­tine since he was run­ning 4–5 days a week and not see­ing any improvement.

Jeff’s ini­tial goals for join­ing boot camp were to run races faster and lose some weight – then, he revised that and decided he just wanted to be able to fin­ish the work­outs with­out throw­ing up. Mary Cromer was with him that first try-it-out day and she saw how close he was to los­ing it. Those first few weeks were very hard, and Jeff resolved not to stop. He never wants to go through those days of total body sore­ness again!

Jeff’s biggest diet chal­lenges are fast food and candy. He is bet­ter now at resist­ing the urges for french fries and burg­ers, but he still has a hard time with choco­late. The log book helps him immensely since it reminds him that work­ing out does not mean he can eat what­ever he wants (which is what he used to think).

Jeff’s biggest fit­ness accom­plish­ments are run­ning a 5k dur­ing Tracy’s win­ter chal­lenge in 21:30 and the Pub­lix Half Marathon in 1:49:42. These times are very much improved over his times in sim­i­lar dis­tances over the last cou­ple of years.

Jeff’s Fun Facts

Favorite exer­cise:
 Jeff loves run­ning and sprints, and the core exer­cises are start­ing to grow on him – like plank. Jeff hates all of the upper body exer­cises, but he has seen the most improve­ment in those areas and does not dread them like he used to.

Favorite work­out:
 Run Days! Or, any work­out with run­ning inter­vals between exer­cises. Least favorite – ”No Need to Run” or ”Fatal Subtraction.”

Advice for new boot campers:
 Don’t skip a sin­gle day so that it becomes a part of your daily rou­tine. And, use your log book to see what you eat!

The best thing a trainer has done for Jeff:
 Each trainer has offered Jeff advice or encour­age­ment at one time or another. Leigh and Daniel, as some of the strongest run­ners, have pushed him the hard­est to find speed he didn’t think he had. Tracy con­stantly reminds him to push him­self the hard­est at the end of work­outs. But, he would have to say that Andy’s rig­or­ous review of his log book each morn­ing (with gen­tle ridicule when war­ranted) has been the most help­ful. Jeff still believes that he is the only camper to have eaten a McRib in the last 6 months. Never again.

Did you know?
 In 2003, Jeff passed the U.S. Depart­ment of State’s For­eign Ser­vice Exam (both the writ­ten and oral sec­tions) and went through the secu­rity clear­ance process to work in our embassies… but ulti­mately decided to stay put in Atlanta and become a part­ner at his law firm.

Boot Camp Rocks!

Yes, boot camp rocks. And why does it rock? Because of YOU! You ARE boot camp, and we thank you for it. We appre­ci­ate all of the value each and every one of you adds to BC4C and look for­ward to con­tin­ued growth and suc­cess with you.

Thank you to Jeff Leonard for the fun and cre­ative t-shirt con­cept this month. Not bad for a lawyer, huh? If you have any ideas that you’d like to see on a t-shirt, send them to Lau­ren. If it’s a win­ner, you’ll get to wear your idea!

See you Tues­day, April 5th! (Or sooner… see below for details… )

What were your goals for the month? Did you meet them? Leave a com­ment on this post by click­ing the “Com­ments” link above.

Mis­cel­la­neous Announcements

We will be meet­ing (infor­mally) next week on Mon and Fri. If you would like to work out with us next week, show up at the usual spot by 5:55 am. And be pre­pared to try out new work­outs! Andrew will be send­ing a con­fir­ma­tion email about next week’s work­outs later today, so check your inbox for any fur­ther details.

Every­one is invited to Share the Love! Come join me Sun­day, 5–10 pm at Eddie’s Attic for a ben­e­fit con­cert. The pro­ceeds ben­e­fit Atlanta Pet Res­cue, Athena’s Ware­house, and Geor­gia Organ­ics. The con­cert will fea­ture the Susi French Con­nec­tion, a sev­en­ties cover band. You’ll know all the words to all the songs! I hope to see you there! Get more details →